{"id":325,"date":"2014-12-31T14:49:10","date_gmt":"2014-12-31T14:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joshmitteldorf.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=325"},"modified":"2017-01-06T01:28:47","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T01:28:47","slug":"where-do-we-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2014\/12\/31\/where-do-we-live\/","title":{"rendered":"Where do We Live?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of us who are motivated to extend human lifespan focus on the physical body, and, above all, the brain<\/a> as the seat of our present awareness, the home of all that makes us gloriously, individually human.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We are conditioned by the standard scientific understanding of brain, mind, and consciousness. \u00a0Our personalities and all that makes us who we are are embodied in the circuitry of the brain. Synapses in the brain are the analog of memory gates in a computer, storing long-term memories in a complex but deterministic digital language. \u00a0From the brain\u2019s activity, we derive our conscious awareness and sense of self.<\/p>\n

In fact, there is an arm of the life extension movement<\/a> that goes so far as to imagine that people’s\u00a0thought processes and their creative intelligence will someday be read from the pattern of neural connections in their brains, and re-created in the circuits of a supercomputer.<\/p>\n

It is just this model at which David Glanzman and his UCLA laboratory took aim in a paper last month<\/a>. \u00a0He trained snails to respond reflexively to certain chemical cues, then used hormones to block the formation of new neural connections. \u00a0The memorized reflexes were gone. \u00a0But then, by chemically restoring nerve growth, he was able to bring back the trained behaviors! \u00a0So where were the memories stored while the nerves were absent?<\/p>\n

Glanzman does not shy from the full implications of this revolutionary finding. \u00a0\u201cThese results challenge the idea that stable synapses store long-term memories.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Monarchs<\/b><\/p>\n

Although this is a useful experiment for confronting us squarely with a disparate reality, we actually might have learned earlier that memories can live outside synapses. \u00a0We might have realized this if we thought a bit about butterflies.<\/p>\n

Near my mother\u2019s house in Pacific Grove, CA is a tree where tens of thousands of Monarch butterflies alight in the fall and sleep through the winter months. \u00a0Come spring, they awaken to the warmth and begin their northward diaspora, spreading to reach most of the United States and Southern Canada. \u00a0They will die, and their children will feed on milkweed until they are ready to make a cocoon. \u00a0The children of their children will live and die next spring, followed by three or four more generations during the summer. \u00a0Seven months after their departure, the great great great great grandchildren of those monarchs that left Pacific Grove in the spring will return. \u00a0They will fly thousands of miles to find that same tree and congregate there for the next winter\u2019s hibernation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

How do they know where to go? \u00a0We say, \u201cscience has no answer,\u201d \u00a0but this does not acknowledge the depth of the contradiction to accepted science that is embodied in this one phenomenon. \u00a0There is no resolution of this mystery that does not profoundly upset our biological models of the brain and its relationship to knowledge, learning and memory. \u00a0A minimally revolutionary hypothesis would require that cartographic information can be coded into an epigenetic language, and passed from one generation to the next, for example in the methylation pattern of chromosomes. \u00a0Is there really a complete navigational language written in chromatin? \u00a0I find it more plausible that this phenomenon is akin to stories of human reincarnation<\/a>, or to\u00a0what Elizabeth Mayer calls Extraordinary Knowing<\/a>, phenomena rooted in a realm of physics that we have yet to discover.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Quantum Lessons<\/b><\/p>\n

Even more subversive to our sense of self-and-other is the science of quantum mechanics. \u00a0Schroedinger and Bohr<\/a> were two of the four originators of the quantum theory in the 1920s. \u00a0They described quantum weirdness by saying that there is no objective world out there, but only a space of potentialities that congeals in one aspect or another as we look at it. \u00a0Depending on what we look at and what questions we ask, the world takes a corresponding shape. \u00a0John Wheeler (Feynman\u2019s teacher) described this as a cosmic game of Twenty Questions<\/a>, in which the solution to the puzzle does not exist ahead of time, but is gradually shaped by the questions as they are posed.<\/p>\n

There are alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics, but they are no less weird. \u00a0Fashionable of late is the Many Worlds picture, in which the meaning of the word \u201cmany\u201d explodes beyond our ability to conceptualize. \u00a0Imagine your own person splitting each second into a googol different universes, that is 10100<\/sup> separate realities, each of them containing a different version of you, and in the next second, each of those 10100<\/sup> universes splits into 10100<\/sup> more universes.<\/p>\n

A young Spanish student of quantum physics and metaphysics, Dolors<\/a> has created a series of videos<\/a> that help us remember that our concept of an objective physical reality following deterministic mechanical laws<\/a> went out with 19th Century physics, and is utterly incompatible with the existence of such basic quantum applications as lasers and transistors and superconductivity.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Wondrous and Limited Potential of Longevity Science<\/b><\/p>\n

I counsel my two daughters that they might plan a lifetime of 200 years. \u00a0I think it a good bet that we will shortly learn enough about telomerase to add a few decades to human life expectancy, and during those decades there will be time to decode the epigenetics of signaling molecules to stretch a few decades more.<\/p>\n

If aging is completely counteracted, the human lifetime would be about 1,000 years. \u00a0This is based on the fact that a young person in the prime of life has about a 1\/1,000 mortality risk from year to year. \u00a0Those deaths are by suicide, by car accidents, drug overdoses, human violence, infectious diseases, etc. \u00a0To raise the human life expectancy beyond 1,000 years, we will need to grow collectively and politically, becoming a drastically less violent, more careful, wiser and more environmentally responsible species.<\/p>\n

A thousand years is a great expanse of time. \u00a0I\u2019m sure we should all feel a sense of wonder and relief contemplating a lifetime of a thousand years. \u00a0So much to discover, so much to witness and to learn! \u00a0So many skills to acquire and changes to absorb!<\/p>\n

But still a blink of the eye on the scale of cosmic history.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

We are succeeding<\/b><\/p>\n

at delaying debilitating disease, forestalling bodily decay, extending the prime of life. \u00a0But we have not even addressed the fundamental mortality of our physical bodies. \u00a0To escape from the finite domain of time requires an expansion into mysticism. \u00a0Curiously, science at its bleeding edge, points us in just this direction.<\/p>\n

It is clear that we are not our brains. \u00a0Our boundaries are fuzzy, some of you extends into me and some of the inanimate is part of the animate. \u00a0Maybe the inanimate world itself\u00a0harbors some nascent consciousness<\/a>. \u00a0To conceive of the world as a creation of mind is at least as valid a picture as the standard view in which mind is an epiphenomenon of computing machines.<\/p>\n

But the truth is that we really don\u2019t know and probably can\u2019t conceive who we are, or how we live, or whence derives our precious sense of self.<\/p>\n

\n

The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. \u00a0It is the sower of all true science. \u00a0He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. \u00a0—\u00a0Albert Einstein<\/em> (1879 – 1955)<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

An Inquiry into the Texture of Experience <\/strong>
\nand the Plausibility of Reincarnation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Awareness flashes forth from waking dreams\u2014
\nAmong the clouds, a peek-a-boo of sun.
\nMere thought of self can be the death of fun\u00a0\u2014
\nMy consciousness, more fractured than it seems.<\/p>\n

While newly born, I formed the concept \u2018mother’
\nAbstract from intermittent smells and touch,
\nAnd then my precious self, another such
\nconstructed separation from \u2018the other\u2019.<\/p>\n

My isolation and the dread of death:
\nnot the human fate, but mere illusion.
\nThe goals I set myself in such profusion:
\neach a meditation on the breath.<\/p>\n

If only I might fathom where I\u2019ve been
\nwhen, bridging deaths, I wake in different skin!<\/p>\n

\u2014\u00a0JJM\u00a02012 July<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of us who are motivated to extend human lifespan focus on the physical body, and, above all, the brain as the seat of our present awareness, the home of all that makes us gloriously, individually human. We are conditioned by the standard scientific understanding of brain, mind, and consciousness. \u00a0Our personalities and all that … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhere do We Live? - Josh Mitteldorf<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2014\/12\/31\/where-do-we-live\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Where do We Live?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Most of us who are motivated to extend human lifespan focus on the physical body, and, above all, the brain as the seat of our present awareness, the home of all that makes us gloriously, individually human. 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The surprising fact that our bodies are genetically programmed to age and to die offers an enormous opportunity for medical intervention. It may be that therapies to slow the progress of aging need not repair or regenerate anything, but only need to interfere with an existing program of self-destruction. Mitteldorf has taught a weekly yoga class for thirty years. He is an advocate for vigorous self care, including exercise, meditation and caloric restriction. After earning a PhD in astrophysicist, Mitteldorf moved to evolutionary biology as a primary field in 1996. He has taught at Harvard, Berkeley, Bryn Mawr, LaSalle and Temple University. He is presently affiliated with MIT as a visiting scholar. In private life, Mitteldorf is an advocate for election integrity as well as public health. He is an avid amateur musician, playing piano in chamber groups, French horn in community orchestras. His two daughters are among the first children adopted from China in the mid-1980s. Much to the surprise of evolutionary biologists, genetic experiments indicate that aging has been selected as an adaptation for its own sake. This poses a conundrum: the impact of aging on individual fitness is wholly negative, so aging must be regarded as a kind of evolutionary altruism. Unlike other forms of evolutionary altruism, aging offers benefits to the community that are weak, and not well focussed on near kin of the altruist. 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The surprising fact that our bodies are genetically programmed to age and to die offers an enormous opportunity for medical intervention. It may be that therapies to slow the progress of aging need not repair or regenerate anything, but only need to interfere with an existing program of self-destruction. Mitteldorf has taught a weekly yoga class for thirty years. He is an advocate for vigorous self care, including exercise, meditation and caloric restriction. After earning a PhD in astrophysicist, Mitteldorf moved to evolutionary biology as a primary field in 1996. He has taught at Harvard, Berkeley, Bryn Mawr, LaSalle and Temple University. He is presently affiliated with MIT as a visiting scholar. In private life, Mitteldorf is an advocate for election integrity as well as public health. He is an avid amateur musician, playing piano in chamber groups, French horn in community orchestras. His two daughters are among the first children adopted from China in the mid-1980s. Much to the surprise of evolutionary biologists, genetic experiments indicate that aging has been selected as an adaptation for its own sake. This poses a conundrum: the impact of aging on individual fitness is wholly negative, so aging must be regarded as a kind of evolutionary altruism. Unlike other forms of evolutionary altruism, aging offers benefits to the community that are weak, and not well focussed on near kin of the altruist. 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