What are brains for? is a question that could have obvious answers e.g. they exist for thinking, for memory, for perception, for imagination, for making decisions etc. However, the real answer is much more interesting and calls the obvious answers into question. Indeed, the answer calls into question the prevailing cognitivist version of psychology.
One way to answer the question is to ask another question - why do basic multicellular creatures like sea squirts have basic brains, while much more complex multicellular entities like trees thrive without one?
Sea squirts are fascinating animals. They may look primitive. But in fact are one of the most highly evolved marine invertebrates. They start out looking like tadpoles and end up looking like beautiful leathery bags. In the process, they “lose their minds,” so to speak!
Noted biologist and neuroscientist, Rudolfo Llinas points out: At its larval stage a sea squirt uses its active brain and rudimentary eye to seek a place to settle. Once found, it attaches itself to its permanent home and begins an amazing transformation. It dissolves its brain. Why? because it no longer moves, it no longer needs one!
Drawing on this and other examples, Llinas asserts that ‘a nervous system is only necessary for multicellular creatures. . .that can orchestrate and express active movement. . .’. That is, brains are for guiding mobile interactions with the world, and that interaction is mediated by the body.
This is an important point and perspective; it means that brains have co-evolved with bodies and contexts; brains have evolved to perform the necessary functions of a specific type of body in relation to specific types of context. Furthermore, it means scientists are destined to misunderstand brain and mind if they study them in isolation from the body acting in its normal context.
This prognosis for cognitive science is not a new one, it is one made over a century ago, but it was forgotten until recently and it’s now emerging as a strong candidate for explaining a large part of the replication crisis in psychology and other related sciences.
Laboratory experiments are by nature reductive. They take brains and bodies out of context and present them with non-ecologically typical tasks. This is problematic at two levels. Firstly, because experiments often use tasks that human brains and bodies have not evolved to be good at, it is possible to misunderstand human capabilities. Secondly, they often fail to consider the development of specific brains in specific bodies developed in particular cultural contexts, and so don't consider variations that lead to the replication crisis in science. Taking a look at each issue in turn:
Christof Koch (2004) conducted dual-task experiments that demonstrate focal attention isn’t needed to recognize the presence of one or more animals in briefly presented complex natural scenes. However, subjects fail to identify simple shapes or forms against plain backgrounds. Koch concludes that we can process mass information from our natural environment, but not minimal unfamiliar out of context information.
Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier (2010) posit that such results require a “fundamental change in thinking about human and animal behavior”. They reference mathematical biologists McNamara & Houston (2009) and suggest that “although behavioral ecologists have built complex models of optimal behavior in simple environments, we … need to focus on simple mechanisms that perform well in complex environments.”
A shift towards Gigerenzer’s position would be sizmic in terms of how we define expertise and how we think about human performance and development. Instead of seeing humans as bounded by cognitive capacity that requires significant scaffolding, we would explore and develop simple heuristics that are contextually powerful.
Perhaps a reason why an increasing number of leading psychologists are calling for a move towards methodologies that recognise and introduce ecologically meaningful contexts into studies seeking to understand our cognitive functioning and capacity.
A call that also recognises the need to consider and explicate individual differences arising from personal and cultural experience. An excellent example of such variation is differential colour perception arising from different linguistic and cultural experiences and contexts.
Above, the circle of green squares includes one square that is a different shade of green. Members of the Himba tribe immediately identify this square, however, they struggle to see the blue square in the right-hand circle as different from all the others; Himba tribe members literally see the blue square as the same colour as those around it. In case you are struggling to identify the different green square, it is in the same position as the blue one.
The Himba language classifies colour differently, and this difference leads to differences in perceptual abilities. Some perceptual abilities that we could have categorised as highly developed (i.e. distinguishing shades of green) and some that we may have labelled remedial (i.e. the lack of ability to distinguish between blue and green). Clearly context and culture matters.
Similar results are achieved when looking at the cognitive processes of language acquisition and comprehension. Including investigating whether phrases are processed as metaphor. For example, is the phrase, “Christmas is fast approaching” processed differently to, “I am fast approaching Christmas”? In these examples, a limited amount of time until Christmas is metaphorically conceptualised as the speed of movement across a short distance. The question for scientists is, when we process the first phrase do we literally see Christmas coming towards us; and experience ourselves as moving towards a stationary Christmas in the second? Some scientists argue neither, and instead, they are both just a turn of phrase. While others argue these phrases reveal how we conceptualise time and our relationship to events; they are - cognitive metaphors - and we process such metaphors as literal, using the perceptual and motor parts of our brain we mentally simulate (subconsciously) Christmas or ourselves physically moving along a path.
Some lab based experiments have indicated that such metaphors are not processed literally, i.e. we don’t mentally simulate moving along a path, and suggests that we do not reveal our conceptual structures and processes when we use phrases like ‘Christmas is fast approaching’. However, different results are achieved when conceptual metaphors are tested in contexts in which they would be useful. Such findings lead to noted psychologists such as Lawrence W. Barsalou suggesting that we will not understand human conceptualisation unless we begin to study it in connection with natural contexts, and not in isolation.
Taking these three examples, noticing tigers in the grass, colour perception, and the processing of cognitive metaphor; we can begin to see examining the brain in isolation from body and context can lead to a misunderstanding of our capabilities and capacities, and a fundamental misunderstanding of how our brains work.
Context Shaping Theories of Brain and Mind
Even scientific movements that have ignored the context of subjects under study have paradoxically been subliminally influenced their own contexts. If we trace the evolution of the theories of mind we can see each has been fundamentally shaped by their contemporary contexts;
‘Mind as a machine’ with minds having parts that can break down, was around in the time of forces and mechanics;
‘Mind as a information processor’ with inputs and outputs and linked processes carried out by specialist processing areas in the brain, developed alongside the evolution of the computer;
and now we have sophisticated statistical processing methodologies in science, it’s no surprise that we see the brain as a bayesian engine.
A Fresh Look
So what is the new emerging metaphor of mind? Perhaps it’s ‘mind as ecosystem’, and hence why the new revolution in cognitive science can be seen as connecting the brain back to the body, and back to context. And perhaps, this why the theories such as embodiment are being posited as a unifying perspectives for psychology. Additionally, why embodiment and associated theories are busy explaining anomalies and integrating ideas across disparate fields.
Essentially a metaphor that nudges us from asking the question - what do brains do? towards asking the question - what are brains for?