The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

by V.S. Ramachandran

Especially awe inspiring is the fact that any single brain, including yours, is made up of atoms that were forged in the hearts of countless, far-flung stars billions of years ago. These particles drifted for eons and light-years until gravity and chance brought them together here, now. These atoms now form a conglomerate—your brain—that can not only ponder the very stars that gave it birth but can also think about its own ability to think and wonder about its own ability to wonder. With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, is the greatest mystery of all.

Far away on a remote island near Java there lived, not so long ago, a race of diminutive creatures—or should I say, people—who were just three feet tall. They were very close to human and yet, to the astonishment of the world, turn out to have been a different species who coexisted alongside us almost up until historical times. On the Connecticut-sized island of Flores they eked out a living hunting twenty-foot dragon-lizards, giant rats, and pigmy elephants. They manufactured miniature tools to wield with their tiny hands and apparently had enough planning skills and foresight to navigate the open seas. And yet incredibly, their brains were about one-third the size of a human’s brain, smaller than that of a chimp.

But if this is so, you may wonder, where does our uniqueness come from? As Shakespeare and Parmenides had already stated long before Darwin, nothing can come of nothing.

It would also explain the paradoxical finding (not proven, but suggestive) that some severely depressed patients commit suicide when first put on antidepressant drugs such as Prozac. It is arguable that in extreme Cotard cases suicide would be redundant, since the self is already “dead” there is no one there who can or should be put out of her suffering. On the other hand, an antidepressant drug may restore just enough self-awareness for the patient to recognize that her life and world are meaningless; now that it matters that the world is meaningless, suicide may seem the only escape.