Neuroplasticity and Cultural Systems
In neurobiology, it was long believed that the brain had highly localized functions and stopped growing in adulthood. Now, we know that such extremes are inaccurate. Brain functions like memory, emotions, and even motor activation are widely distributed, not limited to small, specific areas. Even the division between sensory input and motor output is no longer seen as rigid. The mapping of active brain regions—areas that together form mental functions—appears to be constantly and dynamically changing in response to life experiences.
There are several mechanisms by which experience changes the brain: 1) the growth of new neural connections, 2) the strengthening or weakening of synapses, 3) myelination by glial cells, which speeds up the flow of action potentials by 100 times and shortens the recovery period between firings by 30 times (30 Ă— 100 = 3,000 times faster and more coordinated in time and space), and 4) changes in epigenetic regulators of DNA molecules, such as histones and methyl groups. Epigenetic changes are induced by experience and can transform how experience affects gene expression, protein synthesis, and structural changes in the brain.
All these ways in which experience changes the brain are part of what’s called neuroplasticity. Its discovery may quickly revolutionize how we share experiences and open doors to understanding how relationships and the mind can influence the brain.
The Role of Attention and Experience
These findings can be woven into our discussion of how the mind emerges from the flow of energy and information within and between us. The way attention directs this flow activates certain neural pathways and interpersonal experiences. Internally, attention at the very least stimulates the activation of neurons in the brain. It’s likely that this internal attention sets the flow of energy in motion throughout the body. When we communicate—when I write and you read these words—we also harness the power of attention to direct the flow of energy and its symbolic forms: information. Shifts in neural activation make it possible to change the brain’s structure, and shifts in external attention can alter neural firings within the body, which not only shape brain activity in the moment but also change the structural connections in the brains of everyone involved in these interactions. This suggests that the mind can change the structure of the brain.
I’m reminded of the connection between attention, which shapes the flow of energy and information, and neural activity and growth. Where attention goes, neural firings flow, and neural connections grow. This helps us understand not only how psychotherapy and parenting work, but also how society shapes our minds.
Cultural Systems and Their Influence
To focus on a few aspects of our lives, it’s helpful to use the term “culture” from a systems science perspective. Peter Senge writes that a system is experienced on three levels: events, patterns, and structure (Senge, 2006). On the surface, we perceive events as visible outputs of the system—what a scientist calls “the tip of the iceberg.” Beneath that are behavioral patterns, which aren’t visible in a single event but are influential and can be identified if we acknowledge their existence. Even deeper than visible events and behavioral patterns lies the system’s structure, which can be described as consisting of three components: mental models, patterns of action, and artifacts—the physical aspects of culture. An example of an artifact is changing tables in men’s restrooms, reflecting and reinforcing the system’s stance that in modern society, caring for infants is not just a woman’s responsibility but also a man’s. The structure of a system isn’t always immediately visible, but it can be perceived if we look deeper at the habits of thought, action, and artifacts underlying the system’s patterns and events.
Similarly, it’s impossible to consciously “see” Faraday fields with the body, but they are real. We don’t see the nonlocal entanglement of certain elements, but for specific pairs—like energy and matter—it clearly exists. In systems, we can see events, group them into perceptions of system patterns, and even identify aspects of habitual thoughts and actions, but many remain hidden, especially at first glance. The artifacts of a system’s structure are visible, and the “ripples” they create—in our thoughts and actions, especially in our interactions—can be widely noticed in our culture, but the way they shape our mental life remains hidden. They are like the sea that invisibly surrounds us. Different aspects and properties of culture shape us, whether we realize it or not. This is our “noosphere”—the sphere of human thought.
The Feedback Loop Between Brain and Culture
Imagine this scene: Energy and information surround us, and their flow penetrates the individual. In the nervous system, energy triggers neural firings. This can lead to any of four neuroplastic changes (neural or synaptic development, myelination, or epigenetic modifications regulating gene expression). In turn, neuroplastic changes in the brain alter the energy and information transmitted by the nervous system. In other words, the patterns of energy and information a person sends are directly shaped by different types of neuroplastic changes induced by the noosphere. Changes in the flow of energy and information originate from the brains and bodies of all people in the sphere, forming the social field. System events change, and this is visible to the naked eye, but the system’s processes and even its structural elements—habits of thought and action—may remain inaccessible to everyday surface observation. When events and artifacts change, we more easily notice shifts in the noosphere. The social field is influenced by invisible neuroplastic changes within the people who make up the system. It causes shifts in the noosphere—the flow of energy and information between us within culture—which in turn changes neural activity and connections. This is the recursive, self-reinforcing nature of the noosphere: it induces changes in neural structures that support and shape the flow.
Cultural Evolution and the Distributed Mind
This approach helps us understand how our relationally immersed minds shape communication with each other in the process of so-called cultural evolution. The evolution of views on human development over the past 40,000 years shows that, although the brain reached a certain state of genetically determined anatomical evolution about 90,000 years ago, the shift that enabled symbolic thinking dramatically changed cultural life, as seen in the creation of tools and images (the Upper Paleolithic). The distributed mind became the driving force of human cultural evolution (Dunbar, Gamble, & Gowlett, 2010; Johnson, 2005). It can be suggested that the exchange of symbolic forms within the noosphere—such as through language—stimulated changes in each person’s noosphere, which could induce neuroplastic transformations that, in turn, supported a more complex noosphere.
Philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers proposed that language does not simply reflect our internal states but complements them. It serves as a tool whose role is to expand cognition in ways that devices cannot. It’s quite possible that the recent evolutionary “intellectual explosion” is as much due to this linguistically driven expansion of cognition as to any independent development of our internal cognitive resources (1998: 17).
The point is that the flow of energy and information exists throughout the system: within the body—in the internal, embodied, personal mind, which we can call the “nooshaft”—and between the body and the outside world, in the collective, relational noosphere. To understand “where” the mind is, we can use the powerful contributions of both brain science and systems science. The common denominator of these seemingly different approaches is, again, the flow of energy and information.
Even if it turns out that consciousness is an emergent aspect solely of our nooshaft—the work of an individual brain or organism—we can still become aware of the noosphere and subjectively, consciously feel this relational aspect of mind, just as we are aware of the nooshaft and subjectively feel the internal aspect of mind. Consciously or unconsciously, the nooshaft and the noosphere reflect the embodied and relational mind, which shapes neuroplastic changes in the brain and our culture, and is itself shaped by them.