Our Inner Reality
Looking at our inner and outer reality, how they intertwine and respond with each other.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison a group of professors, Barry Van Veen (engineering), Giulio Tononi (psychiatry) and Daniela Den-tico (neuroscientist), worked to map the neural circuits of the brain using an electrode net to track EEG signals, in order to identify the patterns within the brain during the use of the imagination. The subjects would be shown a set of short videos, and then asked to replay what they had just seen, in their heads. Results showed sparks of information flowing in opposite directions. With the imagination running from the parietal lobe to the occipital lobe - and vice versa when watching the videos themselves.¹ This essay will engage with the notion that, though now proven to flow separately within the brain, does the imagination and reality flow so juxtaposed when used daily?
Children have the ability to form relationships with inanimate objects and even with imaginary characters, as D.W.Winnicott states in his book Playing and Reality “It is well known that after a few months infants of either sex become fond of playing with dolls, and that most mothers allow their infants some special objects and expect them to become, as it were, addicted to such objects.”² Winnicott fashioned the term “transitional object”, as these possessions are comforters to children, to help them transition into independence while weaning from their mothers. These bonds are less likely to occur within adult life, as they are matured and don’t find necessity in relationships with such objects, or perhaps as commonly suggested, do adults lose the capacity to engage with their imagination in such a creative manner? With adulthood, seemingly comes a better understanding of what is real and what is imagined. Is this truly the case?
“The third part of the life of a human being, a part that we cannot ignore, is an intermediate area of experiencing, to which inner reality and external life both contribute.”³ “Inner reality” being our imagined reality, where we mould together what we perceive and our reactory response to what we perceive. With the experiment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Van Veen explains, “A really important problem in brain research is understanding how different parts of the brain are functionally connected. What areas are interacting? What is the direction of communication?”⁴ In the same way, an adults use of the imagination is hard to decipher. Interaction between reality and our imagination becomes prominent in our perception, hence each person’s reality can differ.
The brain’s parietal lobe is the acknowledger of senses; “touch, pain, temperature” ⁵ it also houses “spatial and visual perceptions”⁶. The occipital lobe “interprets vision (colour, light, movement)”⁷. As the imagination signals from the parietal lobe towards the occipital lobe, it is translating sensory feeling into a visual understanding within the brain. Meaning that our imagination is linked to what we experience through our senses. It is magnificent how our brains map these processes.
The following is an extract from Terry Bisson’s award winning dialogue titled Meat, between two extraterrestrials, who have examined the human body for their research;
¹Search.proquest.com, 2018 ⁵ Mayfield Clinic, 2018
² Winnicott, 2008. P.1 ⁶ Mayfield Clinic, 2018
³ Winnicott, 2008. P.2 ⁷ Mayfield Clinic, 2018
⁴ Search.proquest.com, 2018
"No brain?"
"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."
"So ... what does the thinking?"
"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"
"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."⁸
In conclusion to their research, our brains are lumps of electrically charged meat. Electricity has also been used to in an attempt to alter brain functions through Electroconvulsive therapy. Studies taken place between 2012-2013, show that out of 1789 candidates who suffer from depression and/or anxiety, Electroconvulsive therapy had successful results in lifting or curing suffering in 1712 of the cases.⁹ The comical thing is that even after just shy of 90 years of performing this, medically, scientists and professionals are unable to decode why it has this affect. My theory is that mental illness derives from the imagination, not in the sense that it does not exist, but in the sense that with anxiety comes false scenarios, paranoia and expectation, all mustered by the imagination. Does Electroconvulsive therapy re-circuit the brain? Perhaps it resets the brain to a ‘child-like’ state, so it is able to cope with the flowing current of the imagination and reality, without over-processing each and every detail too seriously?
In a Frankenstein-like experiment in 1802, Giovanni Aldini attached wires into the ears of a decapitated criminal and “zapped the brain”¹⁰ writing in his notes, “I initially observed strong contractions in all the muscles of the face, which were contorted so irregularly that they imitated the most hideous grimaces,”¹¹. I will be repeating a similar process with a (dead) animal’s brain, symbolic of outer reality, observing it’s reaction to electricity, which is the imagination. The brain will be stuffed with shards of wire wool, to interrupt the electrical current, and interrupt the perception that the electricity will run smoothly through the meat. Mimicking the idea that Kant suggests, “Our minds….., our preconscious minds are like complex processing, synthesizing mechanisms.”¹² Our minds are more complex than the black and white, than imagination and reality. Like that of the work of artist, Yunchul Kim, I will combine science and art, as he does in his exhibition Dawns, Mine, Crystal. His work is “with complex layers of metaphors and symbols. For Kim, material is not merely a basis for creating forms and images, but a main protagonist for creation itself.”¹³ The materials used in my experiment are symbolic of how reality is interrupted and moulded by the imagination.
⁸ Bisson, 1990 ¹¹ Jarrett, 2014
⁹ Mind.org.uk, 2016 ¹² Kant, 2018
¹⁰ Jarrett, 2014 ¹³ Korean Cultural Centre UK, 2018
Bibliography
Bisson, T. (1990). Meat. [online] Terrybisson.com. Available at: http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html [Accessed 30 Oct. 2018].
Jarrett, C. (2014). What Happens If You Apply Electricity to the Brain of a Corpse?. [online] WIRED. Available at: https://www.wired.com/2014/05/what-happens-if-you-apply-electricity-to-the-brain-of-a-corpse/ [Accessed 30 Oct. 2018].
Kant, I. (2018). Immanuel Kant: Is Reality Knowable? Kant’s Revolutionary Hypothesis. [online] Campus.aynrand.org. Available at: https://campus.aynrand.org/campus/globals/transcripts/immanuel-kant-is-reality-knowable-kants-revolutionary [Accessed 17 Oct. 2018].
Korean Cultural Centre UK. (2018). [18 September - 3 November] KCCUK 2018 Artist of the Year: Yunchul Kim. [online] Available at: http://london.korean-culture.org/en/22/board/1/read/91695 [Accessed 12 Nov. 2018].
Mayfield Clinic. (2018). Anatomy of the Brain. [online] Available at: https://mayfieldclinic.com/pe-anatbrain.htm [Accessed 12 Nov. 2018].
Mind.org.uk. (2016). Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) | Mind, the mental health charity - help for mental health problems. [online] Available at: zhttps://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/drugs-and-treatments/electroconvulsive-therapy-ect/#.W-miqGxLGUk [Accessed 14 Oct. 2018].
Search.proquest.com. (2018). Log In - ProQuest. [online] Available at: https://search.proquest.com/docview/1640566270?pq-origsite=summon[Accessed 16 Oct. 2018].
Winnicott, D. (2008). Playing and reality. London: American Psychoanalytic Association, pp.1-4.
Additional References
Bergland, C. (2013). Imagination Can Change Perceptions of Reality. [online] Psychology Today. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201306/imagination-can-change-perceptions-reality [Accessed 12 Oct. 2018].
Cohen, G. (2013). How Imagination Shapes Your Reality, by Gabriel Cohen. [online] Dailygood.org. Available at: http://www.dailygood.org/story/426/how-imagination-shapes-your-reality-gabriel-cohen/ [Accessed 16 Oct. 2018].
Gowing, L. and Turner, J. (1966). Turner: imagination and reality. New York.
YouTube. (2018). Mind the Gap Between Perception and Reality | Sean Tiffee | TEDxLSCTomball. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BL9uRJpTqY [Accessed 16 Oct. 2018].