A friend sent me Professor D. David’s article from Republica: “About Trauma and ADHD in Brief. Different from Gabor Maté.”
I’m not in a position to judge or side with anyone. In fact, neither of them, with the articles or books I’ve read, has touched me deeply. I found Dr. Maté more enticing, but I can’t manage to finish Professor David’s “The Psychology of the Romanian People.”
My own limitations!
It’s still helpful for both of them to appear in public with their stances, possibly to popularize science, since we live in an inflation of opinions and therapies when it comes to mental health and psychosomatic experiences.
My position is very similar to Eminescu’s advice:
“Observe the world as though it were a stage.
If one man plays four roles,
You will still guess who he is.
And whether he weeps or quarrels,
You remain quietly in your corner
And from his art you discern
What is evil and what is good.”
To which I add color and symbol like my frivolous jelly!
What is trauma, what is pain?
Libraries have likely been written on this…
For me, the two have very similar representations in the body, both physiologically and in expression.
The International Association for the Study of Pain, which includes more than 6,500 scientists from 123 countries, states that pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.
So pain is not just a sensation but is linked to an emotional state, part of one’s experience.
Pain does not necessarily accompany real or imminent physical harm. It may simply resemble the experience triggered by tissue damage. In other words, pain is a response with a sensory component, an affective-emotional component, and a cognitive-interpretive component, which does not always have an organic cause; it can be purely psychological.
Trauma, similarly, is an intrinsic reaction—akin to pain—to a perceived harmful, abnormal event.
Both involve the brain and the same neural wiring.
We might be able to give definite answers about pain, trauma, neurodivergence (various disorders, syndromes, dis-abilities) only when we unravel the brain’s systemic connections and functions in greater detail.
The brain is not an amorphous, inert, disorganized mass but the most complex tissue—or thing—on Earth.
It doesn’t resemble my jelly, though I’ve heard uninspired comparisons calling it a “higher-grade aspic.”
We humans are on the verge of fully editing the human genome, we’ve discovered the elementary particles that make up matter—fermions and bosons—we’ve placed the James Webb telescope in orbit 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, we’ve created an artificial form of DNA, we’ve launched over 400 Starlink satellites into Earth’s orbit, we’ve developed the brain–computer interface, and yet, despite all technological progress, the brain remains a mystery.
We can’t fully read its structure, functions, and connections to the broader field of consciousness or to morphogenetic fields.
British biologist Rupert Sheldrake, with his controversial theory, is still devotedly trying to explain how morphogenetic fields are responsible for shaping biological forms, acting like invisible “blueprints” that determine how living matter is organized. These fields would possess a collective memory, called “morphic resonance,” enabling structures and forms in nature to be “learned” and “transmitted” between generations, without being entirely genetically encoded.
So if, at the scientific-progress level, we are groping in the dark, any episteme or doxa regarding the nervous system and its perceptual resonance must be taken with caution, whether it comes from big names or from unknowns.
Meanwhile, each of us has the duty to research, to inquire, to educate ourselves, to explore sources, and to discern “what is evil and what is good.”
One of the notable figures who marked my student years was the historian Neagu Djuvara. You might recall he was pointed at by Messrs. Răzvan Teodorescu and Florin Constantiniu when he taught about the role of the Cumans (a Turkic people who settled in Eastern Europe) in founding the Romanian principalities. During a public appearance, Mr. Djuvara urged us toward education and personal research.
He said: “There’s this story and there’s that story, but there’s also a third one—your own. After you take the first two into account, you document yourself and see what conclusion you reach on your own.”
Perhaps I can offer you a moment of Wonder—not with a photo of my delightful lime, raspberry, and mint jelly, but with a click on a link, to the largest brain map ever created:
Ten years ago, Dr. Jeff W. Lichtman, professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University, received a small brain sample.
He and his team ended up obtaining 1,400 terabytes of data from that sample, roughly the content of over a billion books. After further close collaboration with specialists at Google, that data turned into this map.
To understand how the brain supports complex mental functions, it’s crucial to go beyond the traditional boundaries of common cognitive areas such as perception, cognition, action, emotions, memory, and motivation.
This requires an interdisciplinary integration where biology, psychology, mathematics, computer science, and philosophy work together to bring new perspectives on how the brain operates. I believe this interdisciplinary approach is essential for tackling the complex questions about mind and brain, pain and trauma, dissolving the strict barriers among these fields to gain a complete picture of how the brain functions as a whole.
Brain functions are intricate; the old three-level division of the brain, according to Paul MacLean’s formula and my metal spatula that symbolically carved through the jelly, is an outdated, limiting way of viewing it:
The old, reptilian brain
The emotional, limbic, paleomammalian, mammalian brain
The new, neocortical, rational, cognitive brain
Artificially separating mental and emotional processes into distinct categories can hinder progress in understanding the brain.
Instead of seeing the brain as composed of isolated structures, why not view it as a collection of neural networks and circuits?
These are the basic functional units that mediate emotional, cognitive, and behavioral processes. The networks work together to produce adaptive responses to stimuli and can reorganize themselves based on the tasks they receive, demonstrating the brain’s neuroplasticity.
It seems there are also 3 organizational principles explaining the interactive cellular complexity:
• Massive anatomical connectivity:
The brain has a vast network of anatomical connections among neurons in different regions. Each neuron can form thousands of synaptic connections with others, enabling the development of an enormous number of communication pathways. This huge connectivity underlies the brain’s capacity to integrate information from various sources and create complex patterns of neuronal activity.
• Integrative functional coordination:
The brain’s functional activity isn’t located strictly in one specific region but is distributed among multiple areas. The brain works by coordinating multiple regions that simultaneously contribute to different aspects of cognitive processes like perception, memory, and action. Thus, functions arise from the integration of multiple sources of activity.
• Interconnected networks and circuits:
The brain can be seen as a sophisticated hub that receives, centralizes, integrates, and distributes the information needed for the body and mind to function. Although technology cannot match the brain’s modular complexity and inherent interconnectivity, this analogy offers a clear perspective on how the brain manages information flows, much like a hub in a communications network.
“Neuronal connectomics” is the complete study of the brain’s neural networks, aiming to map all synaptic connections among neurons.
The term “connectome” refers to the comprehensive chart of these neural links, similar to how the genome describes all genetic information.
Connectomics developed as an interdisciplinary field, with contributions from neurology, biology, computer science, and engineering.
Though it cannot be attributed to a single person, a few prominent researchers significantly shaped and promoted this area of study. Olaf Sporns, Sebastian Seung, Jeff Lichtman, and Joshua Sanes are pioneers who have made crucial contributions by providing advanced methods for visualizing neural connections.
So the brain isn’t a jelly, as one might think; in fact, it’s the fattest organ in the body, and my raspberry–mint jelly is certainly not a relative of the brain; it’s almost entirely protein, and the interactions among its atoms and molecules are sensitive to heat.
We don’t know what tomorrow’s studies and results will look like or what scientists will declare in the media, for time passes and another age comes along, “all things are old and all are new; what is evil and what is good, question and reckon for yourself.”
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