The science of the brain is neurobiology. The Mystery of God and the Science of the Brain

Ecology of Consciousness: Life. It has been absolutely proven that our brain is a wildly plastic thing, and individual training seriously affects it - to a much greater extent than innate predispositions.

When compared with the cubs of other animals, we can say that a person is born with an underdeveloped brain: its mass in a newborn is only 30% of the mass of the brain of an adult. Evolutionary biologists suggest that we must be born prematurely in order for our brains to develop by interacting with external environment. Science journalist Asya Kazantseva in the lecture "Why should the brain learn?" within the framework of the program "Art Education 17/18" told

About the process of learning from the point of view of neuroscience

and explained how the brain changes under the influence of experience, as well as how sleep and laziness are useful during study.

Who studies the phenomenon of learning

The question of why the brain learns is dealt with by at least two important sciences - neuroscience and experimental psychology. Neurobiology, which studies the nervous system and what happens in the brain at the level of neurons at the time of learning, most often works not with people, but with rats, snails and worms. Experimental psychologists try to understand what things affect a person's learning ability, such as giving him an important task that tests his memory or learning ability, and watching how he copes with it. These sciences have developed rapidly in last years.

If you look at learning from the point of view of experimental psychology, it is useful to remember that this science is the heir of behaviorism, and behaviorists believed that the brain is a black box, and they were fundamentally not interested in what was happening in it. They perceived the brain as a system that can be influenced by stimuli, after which some kind of magic happens in it, and it reacts in a certain way to these stimuli. Behaviorists were interested in what this reaction might look like and what could influence it. They believed thatlearning is a change in behavior as a result of mastering new information

This definition is still widely used in the cognitive sciences. Let's say, if a student was given Kant to read and he remembered that there is "a starry sky above his head and a moral law in me," he voiced it at the exam and he was given a five, then the training took place.

On the other hand, the same definition applies to the behavior of the bearded seal (aplysia). Neuroscientists often experiment with this mollusk. If you shock Aplysia in the tail, she becomes afraid of the surrounding reality and retracts her gills in response to weak stimuli, which she was not afraid of before. Thus, she also undergoes a change in behavior, learning. This definition can be applied to even simpler biological systems. Imagine a system of two neurons connected by one contact. If we apply two weak current pulses to it, then the conductivity will temporarily change in it and it will become easier for one neuron to send signals to another. This is also training at the level of this small biological system. Thus, from the learning that we observe in external reality, it is possible to build a bridge to what is happening in the brain. It has neurons, changes in which affect our response to the environment, i.e., the learning that has taken place.

How the brain works

But to talk about the brain, you need to have a basic understanding of how it works. In the end, each of us has these one and a half kilograms of nervous tissue in our heads. The brain is made up of 86 billion nerve cells, or neurons. A typical neuron has a cell body with many processes. Part of the processes are dendrites, which collect information and transmit it to the neuron. And one long process, the axon, passes it on to the next cells. The transmission of information within one nerve cell means an electrical impulse that goes along the process, like along a wire. One neuron communicates with another through a contact point called a "synapse", the signal comes with the help of chemicals. An electrical impulse leads to the release of molecules - neurotransmitters: serotonin, dopamine, endorphins. They seep through the synaptic cleft, act on the receptors of the next neuron, and it changes its functional state - for example, channels open on its membrane, through which ions of sodium, chloride, calcium, potassium, etc. begin to pass. that, in turn, a potential difference is also formed on it, and the electrical signal goes further, to the next cell.

But when a cell transmits a signal to another cell, this is most often not enough for some noticeable changes in behavior, because one signal can also be obtained by chance due to some kind of disturbance in the system. To exchange information, cells transmit many signals to each other. The main coding parameter in the brain is the frequency of impulses: when one cell wants to transmit something to another cell, it starts sending hundreds of signals per second. By the way, the early research mechanisms of the 1960s and 70s formed a sound signal. An electrode was implanted into the brain of an experimental animal, and by the speed of the crackle of a machine gun that was heard in the laboratory, it was possible to understand how active the neuron was.

The pulse frequency coding system works at different levels of information transfer - even at the level of simple visual signals. We have cones on the retina that respond to different wavelengths: short (in the school textbook they are called blue), medium (green) and long (red). When a certain wavelength of light enters the retina, different cones are excited to varying degrees. And if the wave is long, then the red cone begins to intensively send a signal to the brain so that you understand that the color is red. However, everything is not so simple here: the sensitivity spectrum of the cones overlaps, and the green one also pretends that she saw something like that. Then the brain analyzes it on its own.

How the brain makes decisions

Principles similar to those used in modern mechanical research and experiments on animals with implanted electrodes can be applied to much more complex behavioral acts. For example, in the brain there is a so-called pleasure center - the nucleus accumbens. The more active this area, the more the subject likes what he sees, and the higher the likelihood that he will want to buy it or, for example, eat it. Experiments with a tomograph show that, by a certain activity of the nucleus accumbens, it is possible, even before a person voices his decision, for example, regarding the purchase of a blouse, to say whether he will buy it or not. As the excellent neuroscientist Vasily Klyucharev says, we do everything to please our neurons in the nucleus accumbens.

The difficulty is that in our brain there is no unity of judgments, each department can have its own opinion about what is happening. A story similar to the dispute of cones in the retina is repeated with more complex things. Let's say you see a blouse, you like it, and your nucleus accumbens emits signals. On the other hand, this blouse costs 9 thousand rubles, and the salary is another week later - and then your amygdala, or amygdala (the center associated primarily with negative emotions), begins to emit its electrical impulses: “Listen, there is little money left. If we buy this blouse now, we will have problems.” The frontal cortex makes a decision depending on who yells louder - the nucleus accumbens or the amygdala. And here it is also important that each time later we are able to analyze the consequences to which this decision led. The fact is that the frontal cortex communicates with the amygdala, and with the nucleus accumbens, and with the parts of the brain associated with memory: they tell it what happened after the last time we made such a decision. Depending on this, the frontal cortex may be more attentive to what the amygdala and nucleus accumbens are telling it. So the brain is able to change under the influence of experience.

Why are we born with small brains?

All human babies are born underdeveloped, literally premature compared to babies of any other species. No animal has such a long childhood as a person, and they do not have offspring that would be born with such a small brain relative to the mass of the brain of an adult: in a human newborn it is only 30%.

All researchers agree that we are forced to give birth to a person immature because of the impressive size of his brain. The classic explanation is the obstetric dilemma, i.e. the story of the conflict between bipedalism and a large head. To give birth to a cub with such a head and a large brain, you need to have wide hips, but it is impossible to widen them endlessly, because it will interfere with walking. According to anthropologist Holly Dunsworth, in order to give birth to more mature children, it would be enough to increase the width of the birth canal by only three centimeters, but evolution still at some point stopped the expansion of the hips. Evolutionary biologists have suggested that we probably need to be born prematurely in order for our brain to develop in interaction with the external environment, because in the womb as a whole there are quite a few stimuli.

There is a famous study by Blackmore and Cooper. They conducted experiments with kittens in the 70s: most of the time they kept them in the dark and put them in a lighted cylinder for five hours a day, where they received an unusual picture of the world. One group of kittens saw only horizontal stripes for several months, while the other group saw only vertical stripes. As a result, the kittens had big problems with the perception of reality. Some crashed into the legs of chairs because they couldn't see the vertical lines, others ignored the horizontal ones in the same way - for example, they didn't understand that the table had an edge. They were tested with them, played with a stick. If a kitten grew up among horizontal lines, then he sees and catches a horizontal stick, but simply does not notice a vertical one. Then they implanted electrodes into the cerebral cortex of the kittens and looked at how the stick should be tilted in order for the neurons to start emitting signals. It is important that nothing would happen to an adult cat during such an experiment, but the world of a small kitten, whose brain is just learning to perceive information, can be permanently distorted as a result of such an experience. Neurons that have never been exposed stop functioning.

We used to think that the more connections between different neurons, departments of the human brain, the better. This is true, but with certain reservations. It is necessary not just that there are many connections, but that they have something to do with real life. A one and a half year old child has much more synapses, that is, contacts between neurons in the brain, than a professor at Harvard or Oxford. The problem is that these neurons are connected randomly. At an early age, the brain matures rapidly, and its cells form tens of thousands of synapses between everything and everything. Each neuron scatters processes in all directions, and they cling to everything they can reach. But then the principle “Use it or lose it” begins to work. The brain lives in environment and tries to cope with various tasks: the child is taught to coordinate movements, grab a rattle, etc. When he is shown how to eat with a spoon, he has connections in his cortex that are useful for eating with a spoon, since it was through them that he drove nerve impulses. And the connections that are responsible for throwing porridge all over the room become less pronounced, because parents do not encourage such actions.

Synapse growth processes are fairly well understood at the molecular level. Eric Kandel was given the Nobel Prize for the fact that he guessed to study memory not in humans. A person has 86 billion neurons, and until a scientist understands these neurons, he would have to exterminate hundreds of subjects. And since no one allows so many people to have their brains cut open to see how they learned to hold a spoon, Kandel came up with the idea of ​​working with snails. Aplysia is a super convenient system: you can work with it by studying only four neurons. In fact, this mollusk has more neurons, but in its example it is much easier to identify systems associated with learning and memory. During the experiments, Kandel realized that short-term memory is a temporary increase in the conductivity of existing synapses, and long-term memory is the growth of new synaptic connections.

This turned out to be applicable to humans as well. it's like we're walking on grass. At first, we don't care where we go on the field, but gradually we tread a path, which then turns into a dirt road, and then into an asphalt street and a three-lane highway with lamps. Similarly, nerve impulses tread their own paths in the brain.

How associations are formed

Our brain is so arranged: it forms connections between events that occur simultaneously. Usually, when a nerve impulse is transmitted, neurotransmitters are released that act on the receptor, and the electrical impulse goes to the next neuron. But there is one receptor that doesn't work that way, and it's called NMDA. It is one of the key receptors for memory formation at the molecular level. Its peculiarity is that it works if the signal came from both sides at the same time.

All neurons lead somewhere. One can lead to a large neural network that is associated with the sound of a trendy song in a cafe. And others - to another network associated with the fact that you went on a date. The brain is sharpened to link cause and effect, it is able to remember at the anatomical level that there is a connection between a song and a date. The receptor is activated and allows calcium to pass through. It begins to enter into a huge number of molecular cascades, which lead to the work of some previously not working genes. These genes carry out the synthesis of new proteins, and another synapse grows. So the connection between the neural network responsible for the song and the network responsible for the date becomes stronger. Now even a weak signal is enough for a nerve impulse to go and you form an association.

How learning affects the brain

Eat famous story about London taxi drivers. I don’t know how it is now, but just a few years ago, in order to become a real taxi driver in London, you had to pass an orientation exam in the city without a navigator - that is, to know at least two and a half thousand streets, one-way traffic, road signs, bans on stopping, and also be able to build the best route. Therefore, in order to become a London taxi driver, people went to courses for several months. The researchers recruited three groups of people. One group - enrolled in courses to become taxi drivers. The second group - those who also went to the courses, but dropped out. And people from the third group did not even think about becoming taxi drivers. To all three groups, scientists made a tomogram to see the density of gray matter in the hippocampus. This is an important area of ​​the brain associated with the formation of memory and spatial thinking. It was found that if a person did not want to become a taxi driver, or wanted to, but did not, then the density of gray matter in his hippocampus remained the same. But if he wanted to become a taxi driver, went through training and really mastered a new profession, then the density of gray matter increased by a third - this is a lot.

And although it is not completely clear where the cause is and where the effect is (whether people really mastered a new skill, or whether they initially had this area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe brain well developed and therefore it was easy for them to learn), our brain is definitely a wildly plastic thing, and individual training seriously influences it - to a much greater extent than innate predispositions. It is important that even at the age of 60, training has an effect on the brain. Of course, not as efficiently and quickly as at 20, but in general, the brain retains some ability for plasticity throughout life.

Why should the brain be lazy and sleep

When the brain learns something, it grows new connections between neurons. And this process is slow and expensive, you need to spend a lot of calories, sugar, oxygen, energy on it. In general, the human brain, despite the fact that its weight is only 2% of the weight of the entire body, consumes about 20% of all the energy that we receive. Therefore, at every opportunity, he tries not to learn anything, not to waste energy. In fact, this is very nice of him, because if we memorized everything we see every day, then we would go crazy pretty quickly.

In learning, from the point of view of the brain, there are two fundamental important moments. The first is that, when we master any skill, it becomes easier for us to do the right thing than the wrong one. For example, you learn to drive a car with a manual transmission, and at first you do not care if you shift from first to second or from first to fourth. For your hand and brain, all these movements are equally likely; it doesn't matter to you which way to drive the nerve impulses. And when you are already a more experienced driver, it is physically easier for you to shift gears correctly. If you get into a machine with a fundamentally different design, you will again have to think and control by willpower so that the momentum does not go down the beaten path.

Second important point:

Sleep is the most important thing in learning.

It has many functions: maintaining health, immunity, metabolism and various aspects of the brain. But all neuroscientists agree that The most important function of sleep is to work with information and learning. When we have mastered a skill, we want to form a long-term memory. New synapses grow over several hours, this is a long process, and the best time for your brain to do this is when you are not doing anything. During sleep, the brain processes the information received during the day and erases what needs to be forgotten from it.

There is an experiment with rats where they were taught to walk through a maze with electrodes implanted in their brains and found that in their sleep they repeated their path through the maze, and the next day they walked better. Many human tests have shown that what we learn before bed is more recalled than what we learn in the morning. It turns out that students who start preparing for the exam somewhere closer to midnight are doing everything right. For the same reason, it's important to think about problems before bed. Of course, it will be more difficult to fall asleep, but we will upload the question to the brain, and maybe some solution will come in the morning. By the way, dreams are most likely just by-effect information processing.

How learning depends on emotions

Learning is highly dependent on attention., because it is aimed at sending impulses over and over again along specific paths of the neural network. From a huge amount of information, we focus on something, take it into working memory. Further, what we hold our attention on, falls into long-term memory. You could understand my entire lecture, but that doesn't mean that it will be easy for you to retell it. And if you draw a bicycle right now on a piece of paper, this does not mean that it will ride well. People tend to forget important details, especially if they're not bike experts.

Children have always had attention problems. But now in this sense, everything is becoming easier. IN modern society specific factual knowledge is no longer needed so much - it’s just that there are an incredibly large number of them. Much more important is the ability to quickly navigate information, to distinguish reliable sources from unreliable ones. We almost no longer need to concentrate on the same thing for a long time and memorize large amounts of information - it is more important to switch quickly. In addition, now there are more and more professions just for people who find it difficult to concentrate.

There is another important factor influencing learning - emotions. In fact, this is generally the main thing that we had for many millions of years of evolution, even before we built up all this huge frontal cortex. We evaluate the value of mastering a particular skill in terms of whether it pleases us or not. Therefore, it is great if our basic biological emotional mechanisms can be involved in learning. For example, to build such a motivation system in which the frontal cortex does not think that we should learn something through perseverance and focus, but in which the nucleus accumbens says that it just fucking likes this activity.

For our families

* * *

"It's really brilliant... One of the most amazing books I've read in neuropsychiatry and intuition."

Mona Lisa Schultz, MD, PhD, author of Awakening the Intuition

“This work is extremely important for the further development of relations between science and religion. As scientists who have explored the neurobiological foundations of religious experience, given its theological analysis and evaluation, the authors of this book are one of a kind. The book convincingly shows us that the mind is inevitably inclined towards spirituality and religious experiences.

Father Ronald Murphy, Jesuit Order, professor at Georgetown University

“This important book introduces the lay reader, researcher, and clinician to new discoveries in the field of neuroscience regarding the effects of spiritual experiences on the brain, health, and disease. Excellent textbook."

David Larson, MD, MPH, President, National Institute for Health Research

“The amazing work of the Department of Medical Research at the University of Pennsylvania in the emerging new area neurotheology".

Publication of the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Association (Canada) NAPRA ReView

“This book will make you think seriously about religion…because it provides a general framework for reflection and discussion about the spiritual life Newberg, d'Aquili and Rouse have done a great job writing this bold book. It should be read not only in religious circles, but also in book discussion groups and schools.”

The Providence Journal

"Easily written and easy to read... a spellbinding book about the relationship of our mind and ultimate reality"

Catholic Digest Magazine

1. Photo of God. Introduction to the Biology of Belief

In a small, dark laboratory in a large university hospital, a young man named Robert lights candles, lights a stick of jasmine incense, and then sits on the floor and easily assumes the lotus position. A faithful Buddhist practicing Tibetan meditation, he is about to embark on an inner contemplative journey again. As usual, Robert seeks to quieten the incessant idle talk of the mind so that he can plunge into a deeper and clearer inner reality. He has made such journeys a thousand times before, but now something special is happening: while he enters the inner spiritual reality, so that the material world around him becomes a pale illusion, he almost literally remains connected to the physical here and now with the help of cotton twine.

One folded end of the string lies near Robert, the other is behind the closed door of the laboratory in the next room on my finger - I sit with my friend and longtime research colleague Dr. Eugene d'Aquili.

Gene and I are waiting for Robert to signal to us through a string that his meditative state has reached its transcendent peak. It is the moment of spiritual uplift that is of particular interest to us. 1
Since the judgment of when meditation reaches its peak is highly subjective, it is very difficult to define and even more difficult to measure. Nevertheless, such a “peak” state is extremely interesting, since it carries the deepest spiritual meaning and most strongly affects a person. Peak experience can be detected using several different tools that allow you to simultaneously monitor the change in different parameters. The easiest way to identify such moments is by monitoring indicators such as blood flow in the brain, electrical activity of the brain, and some somatic reactions, in particular blood pressure and heart rate. Starting our research, we tried to focus on the subjective feelings of a person who evaluates his experiences. That is why the meditative subjects kept a string next to them, which allowed them, without disturbing the process of meditation, to give us a signal at the moment when they reached the deepest state. Since we have studied the most experienced meditation practitioners, they have had little or no trouble with the string. More research will be needed to study these conditions in more detail. For now, suffice it to say that we can explore or hypothesize about peak states based on the study of "less deep" states, even though it is difficult for us to understand when and how these peak experiences occur. It is worth mentioning the names of the other two most important contributors to our research: Dr. Abass Alavi, head of nuclear medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, who gave me great support, although sometimes I did rather strange things, and Dr. Michael Baym, associated with the same University of Pennsylvania , an internal medicine specialist who practices Tibetan Buddhism.

Method: How to Capture the Spiritual Reality

Over the years, Gene and I have been studying the relationship between religious experience and brain function, and we hoped that by examining Robert's brain activity during the most intense and mystical moments of his meditation, we could better understand the mysterious connections between human consciousness and his constant irresistible desire to establish relationship with something bigger than himself.

Earlier, in a conversation with us, Robert tried to describe to us in words how his meditation reaches a spiritual peak. First, he said, the mind settles down, which allows a deeper and more defined part of the self to emerge. Robert believes that the inner self is the most authentic part of his identity, and this part never changes. For Robert, this inner self is not a metaphor or just an attitude, it has a literal meaning, it is stable and real. This is what remains when the mind leaves its worries, fears, desires and other activities. He believes that this inner self is the very essence of his being. If pressured into conversation, Robert may even call his own self his "soul". 2
Here the word "soul" is used in the most broad sense, otherwise it could create confusion between Eastern and Western ideas about religion and spirituality. Buddhist beliefs are very difficult to explain in terms of Western thinking. However, here we have tried to present these representations in the simplest possible way.

“There is a feeling of eternity and infinity ...

At this moment, I seem to become a part of everyone and everything, I join the existing ”

Robert says that when this deep consciousness (whatever its nature) arises in moments of meditation, when he is completely absorbed in the contemplation of the inner, he suddenly begins to understand that his inner self is not something isolated, but that it is inextricably linked with all creation . However, when he tries to describe this extremely personal experience words, it inevitably refers to the familiar clichés that people have used for centuries, trying to talk about inexplicable spiritual experiences. “There is a feeling of eternity and infinity,” he might say. “At this moment, I kind of become a part of everyone and everything, join the existing one.” 3
Describing their experiences, our subjects usually talk about a sense of unity with the world, about the disappearance of the Self and strong emotions, usually associated with a state of deep peace.

For the traditional scientist, such words have no value. Science deals with what can be weighed, counted, and measured - and anything that cannot be verified on the basis of objective observation simply cannot be called scientific. Although if any scientist were interested in Robert's experience, he would have to declare as a professional that the words of the meditation practice are too personal and too speculative, so that they hardly point to any particular phenomenon in the material world. 4
In a typical case scientific method allows you to call "real" only those things that can be measured.

However, after many years research work Gene and I have come to believe that the experiences Robert reports are very real and can be measured and verified with real science. 5
The word "real" here does not necessarily imply the existence of some external reality associated with such an experience, it suggests that this experience has at least an internal reality.

That's what keeps me sitting behind Gene in the cramped examining room, holding a thin string between my fingers: I'm waiting for Robert's moment of mystical flight because I want to "photograph" the experience. 6
We understand that this is not just a "photo", but that is the essence of our work. Accurately capturing a moment of intense mystical experience is not easy, and even though our subjects plan their meditation exercises, it is very difficult to predict how long such a state will last and how strong it will be. Nevertheless, we believe that we are able to study the processes in the brain that are the basis of the process of meditation, and create a clear and amazing picture of the work of the brain in moments of spiritual experiences.

Spiritual experiences are real and can be measured and verified with real science.

Robert is meditating and we are waiting for about an hour. Then I feel him gently pulling on the string. That means it's time for me to inject the radioactive material into an IV so that it can be fed through a long tube into a vein in Robert's left arm. We give him a little more time to complete his meditation, and then we immediately take him to one of the rooms in the nuclear medicine department, where there is a state-of-the-art single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) device. Robert instantly finds himself on a metal table, and three gamma cameras begin to rotate around his head with the help of a clear movement of robots.

The SPECT camera is a high-tech imaging device that detects radioactive radiation 7
There are some other imaging technologies, like SPECT, that can be used to study brain activity. These are positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Each of these techniques has its advantages and disadvantages compared to others. We chose SPECT for practical reasons: this technique allowed the subject to meditate outside the scanning device, which would be more difficult to do with PET and completely impossible with fMRI.

SPECT cameras are scanning Robert's head, looking for a buildup of radioactive material we injected the moment he pulled the string. This material is distributed through the blood vessels and almost immediately reaches the brain cells, where it remains for several hours. Thus, the SPECT method gives us an accurate freeze-frame of the state of blood flow in Robert's brain immediately after the injection of the substance - that is, precisely at the peak moment of meditation.

An increase in blood flow to some part of the brain indicates an increase in activity in this area. 8
In general, an increase in blood flow is associated with an increase in activity, for the reason that the brain itself regulates its blood flow depending on the needs of its individual parts. Although this is not an absolute rule. In the case of a stroke or head injury, this relationship is not observed. In addition, some nerve cells activate certain parts of the brain, while other cells suppress their activity. Thus, an increase in blood flow may indicate a suppression of activity, leading to a decrease in brain activity as a whole.

Since we now have a fairly good understanding of what functions individual areas of the brain perform, we can assume that SPECT will give us a picture of the work of Robert's brain at the climax of his meditation.

Data we receive

The data obtained is really interesting. On CT scans, we see signs of unusual activity in a small area of ​​gray matter at the top of the back of the brain (see Figure 1). This plexus of neurons with a highly specialized function is called the posterior superior parietal lobe, but for this book we have coined a different name for this area: the orientational association area, or OAS. 9
It should be noted here that in this book we often use terms unknown to science; sometimes we use our own concepts, which should help the reader to understand the mechanism of the brain. However, we have tried to provide guidance on scientific terms for those interested.

The primary task of OAP is the orientation of a person in physical space. It evaluates what is above and what is below, helps us judge angles and distances, and allows us to navigate safely in dangerous physical environments. 10
In this book, we will talk about the functions of different parts of the brain. Although functions are to some extent tied to certain areas of the brain, we should not forget that the brain always works as one system, where for the work of each individual part, the coordinated work of other parts is needed.

To perform such a function, this zone must first of all have a clear and stable image of the physical boundaries of a person. To put it simply, it should clearly separate you from everything else, from what is not you, from what makes up the rest of the universe.

Rice. 1: The top row shows an image of the subject's brain when he is resting; it can be seen that the level of activity is evenly distributed throughout the brain. (The upper part of the image is the front part of the brain, the associative zone of attention, CBA, and the lower part corresponds to the orientation-associative zone, OAZ.) In the lower row are images of the brain of the subject during meditation, while the activity of the left orientation zone (to your right) noticeably smaller than the corresponding right zone. (The darker the area, the more active, and the lighter, the less active.) We present black-and-white images here, because this gives the image the right amount of contrast when printed, although on a computer screen we see images in color.

It may seem strange that the brain needed a special mechanism to distinguish you from everything else in the world; to normal consciousness, this difference seems to be something ridiculously obvious. But this is due precisely to the fact that OAZ performs its work conscientiously and imperceptibly. And with the defeat of this area of ​​the brain, it is extremely difficult for a person to move in space. When such a person, for example, approaches the bed, the brain spends so much energy constantly assessing angles, depths and distances that without its help, simply lying down becomes an impossibly difficult task for a person. Without the help of the orientation zone, which constantly monitors the changing position of the body, a person cannot find his place in space either mentally or physically, so that when he tries to lie down on the bed, he may fall to the floor or, if he manages to be on the mattress, when he wishes to lie down more comfortably, he will press himself against the wall in an uncomfortable position.

But under normal circumstances, OAS helps create a clear sense of the physical position of the world so that we don't have to think about it at all. To do its job well, the orientation zone requires a constant influx of nerve impulses from sensory sensors throughout the body. The OAS sorts and processes these impulses at an uncanny rate at every moment of our lives. In its incredible capacity for work and speed, it surpasses the most modern computers.

Therefore, it is not surprising that SPECT images of Robert's brain, performed before meditating in his normal state of consciousness (basic level), show that many parts of the brain, including the orientation zone, are in a state of high activity. At the same time, we see pulsating flashes of bright red or yellow color on the screen.

When Robert's meditation reaches its apex, the brain images show this area as cool greens and blues, indicating a sharp decrease in its activity.

This discovery surprised us. We know that the orientation zone never rests: how then can we explain such an unusual decrease in the activity of this small area of ​​​​the brain?

And here an amazing thought occurred to us: if the orientation zone continues to work with normal intensity, but something has blocked the flow of sensory information to it 11
This kind of blocking of the flow of information is observed in some processes, both normal and pathological. Many brain structures are deprived of the influx of information due to the action of various inhibitory systems. We will discuss these processes in more detail later.

This hypothesis would explain the decrease in brain activity in this area. And something else is even more curious: this could mean that the OAP “goes blind” for a while, it is deprived of the information that it needs for normal work.

What must happen, we asked ourselves, when the OAP loses the information it needs to operate? Will she continue to follow the boundaries of the body? But if the necessary information ceases to flow to the OAP, it will not be able to determine these boundaries.

How will the brain act in this case? Maybe the zone of orientation, unable to find the boundaries of the bodily self, will admit that such boundaries do not exist? Perhaps in this case the brain will be able to endow the Self with infinity and perceive it as a system of connections with everyone and everything that is in the sphere of the mind. And such a picture is perceived as the final and undeniable reality.

This is how Robert and earlier generations of Eastern mystics described their peak mystical and spiritual experiences and their highest moments of meditation. Here is how the Upanishads of the Hindus put it:

Like a river flowing east and west
Falls into the sea and becomes one with it,
Completely forgetting about the existence of individual rivers,
So all creations lose their separateness,
When they finally merge.12
Cit. Quoted from: Easwaran, 1987.

Robert was one of eight of our subjects who practiced Tibetan meditation. In each case, it was the same routine procedure, and in virtually all subjects, the SPECT scan revealed a decrease in the activity of the orientation zone at the moment when their meditation reached the top. 13
Although not all subjects showed a specific decrease in activity in the orientation zone, a strong negative correlation could be found between increased activity in the frontal lobe (a region of the brain involved in focusing attention) and activity in the orientation zone. From these data, the following conclusion followed: the better the subject fixes attention during meditation, the more the flow of information to the orientation zone is inhibited. But why did not all the subjects have decreased activity of the orientation zone? There are two possible explanations here. Firstly, it may be that the subject, whose OAS activity did not decrease, did not meditate as successfully as others, and although we tried to evaluate the process of meditation all the time, this is a deeply subjective state that is difficult to measure. Secondly, this study allowed us to study only one specific moment of meditation. It is possible that at its early stages there is an increase in the activity of the orientation zone when the subject focuses on the visual image. Perhaps we could observe that the activity of the orientation zone rises, remains at a base level, or decreases depending on the stage of meditation that the subject is actually in, although he himself believes that he is at a deeper stage. We will discuss the implications of these findings in more detail in the chapter on mystical experience.

Later, we expanded the scope of the experiment and examined several Franciscan nuns in prayer in the same way. 14
For more on these experiments, see Newberg et al. 1997, 2000.

Once again, SPECT scans showed that during the peak moments of religious experiences, the sisters could observe similar changes in brain activity. However, unlike the Buddhists, the sisters described their experience in a different way: they spoke of a clear feeling of closeness to God and merging with Him. 15
We will habitually use the masculine gender when speaking of God, although He can be thought of in other ways.

Their descriptions were similar to the words of Christian mystics of the past, including the words of the thirteenth-century Franciscan nun Angela of Foligno: “How great is the mercy of Him who brings about this union ... I possessed God in such fullness that I no longer lived in my usual state, but I was led to a world in which I was united with God and could rejoice in everything.

Through our research and data accumulation, Gene and I have found what we believe to be solid evidence that our subjects' mystical experience—an altered state of consciousness in which they say the Self merges with something greater—was not merely emotional. a curiosity or just a figment of fantasy, but always corresponded to a number of observable neurological phenomena, rather unusual, but not beyond the normal mode of operation of the brain. In other words, mystical experience is biologically real, observable, and can be the subject of scientific research.

At peak moments of religious experiences, significant changes in brain activity can be observed.

This result was not unexpected for us. In fact, all of our previous research has predicted it. Over the years we have looked scientific works devoted to the relationship between religious practices and the brain, trying to understand what is the biological basis of faith. We studied a large number of most different materials. Some studies have addressed questions of interest to us at the level of simple physiology - say, they were talking about changing blood pressure during meditation. Others dealt with much more sublime matters - for example, there was an attempt to measure the healing power of prayer. We got acquainted with studies of the condition of people who survived clinical death, studied mystical emotions caused by epilepsy and schizophrenia, collected data on hallucinations provoked by chemicals or electrical stimulation of brain regions.

In addition to studying scientific literature, we looked for descriptions of mystical experiences in world religions and myths. In particular, Jin studied the ritual practices of ancient cultures and tried to find a connection between the emergence of rituals and the evolution of the human brain. There is a sea of ​​data regarding this connection between religious rituals and the brain, but few of them have been coherent or included in a coherent picture. But as Gene and I explored the mountains of information about religious experience, ritual, and the brain, some of the pieces of the puzzle formed into pictures that made deep sense. Gradually, we created a hypothesis that spiritual experience - by its very roots - is closely connected with the biological essence of man. In a sense, biology defines spiritual aspirations.

Spiritual experience, by its very roots, is closely connected with the biological essence of man.

SPECT scanning allowed us to start testing our hypothesis by examining the brain activity of people engaged in spiritual practices. We cannot say that the obtained results absolutely prove our case, but they support our hypothesis, demonstrating that at the moment of spiritual experience the brain behaves as predicted by our theory. 16
These studies were only our first attempt at an empirical study of the neurophysiology of spiritual experience. Nevertheless, the results obtained, as well as the results of other studies (see: Herzog et al. 1990-1991, Lou et al. 1999), confirmed the most important provisions of our hypothesis.

These encouraging results deepened our enthusiasm for the work and heightened our interest in questions that have preoccupied us over many years of research. These are the questions we have focused our attention on. Is the need for people to create myths rooted in their biological nature? What is the neurological mystery of the power of ritual? What is the nature of the visions and revelations of the great mystics: are these phenomena associated with mental or emotional disturbances, or are they the result of a holistic sensory data processing system in the normal functioning of a healthy and stable psyche from a neurological point of view? Could evolutionary factors such as sexuality and the search for a mate affect the biological aspect of religious ecstasy?

In trying to better understand what follows from our theory, we again and again came across the same question, which seems to be the main one of all: have we found common biological roots for all religious experiences? And if found, what does this theory tell us about the nature of the spiritual search?

A skeptic might say that if all spiritual aspirations and experiences, including the desire of people to make contact with the divine, are biological in nature, this is due to a delusional state, a violation of the biochemical processes in the accumulation of nerve cells.

However, data from SPECT studies point to another possibility. The orientation zone here worked in an unusual way, but it cannot be said that it did not work correctly, and we believe that the color images of the tomogram on the computer screen showed us how the brain turns spiritual experience into reality. After years of literature and research, Gene and I continue to think we were dealing with real neurological processes that have evolved to enable us humans to transcend material existence and connect with a deeper, spiritual part of ourselves that is perceived by us as an absolute and universal reality, connecting us with everything that exists.

In this book, we intend to provide context for these surprising hypotheses. We will look at the biological side of the human drive to create myths and show the neurological mechanisms that give these myths form and power. We will talk about the relationship of myth and ritual and explain how ritual behavior affects the nerve cells of the brain, creating states that are associated with a range of experiences of the transcendent, from a slight sense of spiritual community with members of the congregation to a deeper sense of unity that manifests itself with the participation in intense and prolonged religious rites. We will show that the deep spiritual experience of saints and mystics of any religion and any age can also be associated with the activity of the brain that endows the ritual with transcendent power. We will also show how the brain's desire to interpret such experiences can become the biological basis for various specific religious beliefs.

My colleague and friend Gene d'Aquili sadly died shortly before this book was started, and he is sorely missed here. It was Gene who inspired me to study the relationship between mind and spirit, it was he who taught me to look at the complex structure of a unique organ located in our skull with different eyes. Our joint work Scientific research that form the basis of this book, forced me to reexamine my key ideas about religion and, in essence, about life, reality, and even the sense of my own self. It was a journey to discover my self, in which I changed, and as I think our brain calls us. What follows on these pages is a journey to the most deep secrets brain, to the very core of our selves. It begins with the simplest question: how does the brain determine what is real?

The ability of the associative zone of attention to form intentions and achieve their implementation is also evidenced by studies of cases of its damage. If this zone fails, the patient loses the ability to concentrate, plan for future behavior, and perform complex perceptual tasks that require focused or sustained attention. The victim of such damage, for example, is often unable to complete a long sentence or plan for the day. Often this also leads to flattening of feelings, loss of will and deep indifference towards the events of the surrounding world. These facts, as well as brain imaging studies, indicate that the frontal lobes are involved in the processing and control of emotions, interacting with the limbic system, with which they have numerous interconnections.
The work of the associative zone of attention is well illustrated by the following experiment. When the subjects were asked to count aloud, this increased brain activity primarily in the motor area that controls the movements of the tongue, lips, and mouth. But if the subjects counted to themselves, this led to an increase in the activity of the associative zone of attention: this zone probably helps the brain to focus on the task, especially in the absence of motor activity.
The associative zone of attention, as has already been shown, plays an important role in the formation of various religious and spiritual experiences. Several brain imaging studies, including ours, have shown that the activity of the associative area of ​​attention increases during certain types of meditation. A number of other studies using electroencephalography (EEG) have shown that the electrical activity of the frontal lobe of the brain changes during states of sustained concentration, and that these changes are especially pronounced during meditation in Zen practitioners.
Although there is a wealth of data on EEG changes during intense concentration, unfortunately, there is only one study of the EEG at the time the subject experiences something close to the peak experience. Since peak experiences are relatively rare, it is rather difficult to fix the moment of such an experience on the EEG. In this subject during meditation, significant EEG changes occurred, in particular, in the associative zone of attention and in the orientation-associative zone.
We believe that the associative zone of attention is activated during spiritual practices, such as meditation, because it is involved in the formation of emotional reactions - and religious experiences are usually accompanied by strong emotions. Therefore, we have the right to assume that the associative zone of attention actively interacts with other brain structures responsible for emotions during meditative and religious states.

Creation of the catalog of the world: verbal-conceptual associative zone

The verbal-conceptual associative zone, located at the intersection of the temporal, parietal and occipital lobes, is primarily responsible for the formation of abstract concepts and their verbal expression. Most of the cognitive operations with the use of speech and its understanding - the comparison of concepts, the study of opposites, the naming of objects and their categories, as well as the grammatical and logical functions of a higher order - are performed precisely by the verbal-conceptual associative zone. These operations are essential for the development of consciousness and the expression of the contents of consciousness with the help of words.

The temporal lobe plays the most important role in the formation of religious experiences.

The verbal-conceptual associative zone is extremely important for the work of our psyche, and therefore one should not be surprised that it plays a crucial role in the formation of religious experiences, since almost all religious experiences have a cognitive, or conceptual, component - that is, that part of them, about which we can be aware of. A study conducted by VS Ramachandran at the University of California, Los Angeles showed that patients with temporal lobe epilepsy are more responsive to religious language, especially to religious terms and images. Based on these data, it can be assumed that the temporal lobe plays an important role in the formation of religious experiences. It is also home to other important brain functions, such as cause-and-effect thinking, which are related to our ability to create myths and how myths are expressed through rituals.

* * *

The four association areas we have described represent the most complex neurological brain structures. Thanks to perfect processing or information coming through different channels, we can create a living holistic picture of reality, which changes smoothly and understandably every second. The more complete this perception, the higher our chances of survival, and as a result, all neurobiological activity of the brain is subordinated to the task of survival.

How the brain creates its mind

In the course of the evolution of the human brain, something amazing happened: the brain, with its great ability to perceive reality, began to feel its own existence, so that a person gained the ability to reflect, as if considering what is happening from the outside, about the picture of reality that his own brain creates. So something like an inner personal self-consciousness appeared in the head of a person - an independent I, engaged in observation.
I, with all its emotions, sensations and thoughts, we usually call mind.
Neurology cannot convincingly explain how this happens - how biological functions give rise to an immaterial mind; how the apparatus of the brain, its "flesh and blood", can suddenly turn into self-consciousness. In fact, science and philosophy have been struggling with this question for more than one century, but have not yet found a clear answer to it or even a hint of its acquisition in the near future.

The brain creates the mind. Science can show that the mind does not exist without the neurological activity of the brain

So far, we have used the terms "brain" and "mind" quite loosely. A couple of simple and unambiguous definitions, based on an ever-increasing understanding of important mental processes, will help us now. These definitions, in particular, point to the harmonious cooperation of brain structures aimed at turning raw sensory data into a coherent picture of the world outside the skull. So, brain there is a set of material structures that collect and process sensory, cognitive and emotional information; mind are the phenomena of thinking, memory and emotions generated by perceptual processes in the brain.
Simply put, the brain creates the mind. Science can show that the mind does not exist without the neurological activity of the brain. If the brain were not perfectly capable of processing Various types the data coming to it, the thoughts and feelings that make up the mind, the mind would simply not exist. At the same time, the incessant desire of the brain to build as vivid and complex a perceptual picture as possible inevitably gives rise to thoughts and emotions, from which the mind is formed.
So, from the point of view of neuroscience, the mind cannot exist without the brain, and the brain cannot stop the desire to create the mind in itself. There is such a close connection between the mind and the brain that it would be more reasonable to consider these two concepts as two different aspects of the same reality.
It is worth remembering, for example, that for the appearance of one thought in a person, the most complex joint work of hundreds of thousands of neurons is required. If we wanted to separate the mind from the brain, we would have to mentally separate each neuron from its function - it would be tantamount to trying to separate the salt water of the ocean from the energy that makes waves move and gives them a particular shape. For the existence of a wave, both elements are needed: without energy, the surface of the water would remain flat; without water, this energy would not find expression. Similarly, it is impossible to separate neurons from their functions. If we could do this, thought would be freed from its neurobiological basis and we could view the mind as something separate from the brain, as a consciousness floating in the air, which can be called "soul".
But to separate one from the other, even in the case of a single thought, is absolutely impossible. When you think about the multidimensional and holistic neurobiological activity of the brain, you cannot separate neurons from their functions. The mind tells us again and again that the mind needs a brain, that the brain creates the mind, and that the two entities are essentially one, but we use the two terms only because we look at this whole from two points of view.

For the appearance of one thought in a person, the most complex joint work of hundreds of thousands of neurons is required.

The incomprehensible unity of the biological brain and the disembodied mind is the first aspect of what we call the mystical potential of the mind. The second aspect that our SPECT research indirectly points to is that the mind perceives spiritual experiences as something real. This property, associated with the ability of the mind to enter altered states of consciousness and modify its assessment of reality accordingly at the neurological level, determines the close relationship between biology and religion. But before we begin to consider the nature of this connection, let's talk about the emotional and neurobiological components that make the brain the basis of the mystical mind.

3. Architecture of the brain. How the brain builds the mind

Each time the forces of the soul interact with the created world, they receive created images and likenesses from creation and absorb them. Thus, knowledge of creation arises in the soul. Created things cannot become closer to the soul than it has been said, and the soul can approach creation only through purposeful perception of images. And only through such an image does the soul approach the created world, for the image is that which the soul creates with its own forces. The soul desires to know, say, the nature of a stone, a horse, a man. Then she creates an image.

Meister Eckhart, Mystiche Schriften, op. by: Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism

The medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart lived several centuries before the advent of the science of neuroscience. However, he seems to have intuitively grasped one of the fundamental principles of this discipline: that what we perceive as reality is in fact only an image of reality created by the brain.
Our current understanding of the perceptual power of the brain confirms his point. Nothing enters consciousness as a finished whole. There is no direct and objective experience of reality.
Everything that the brain perceives - all thoughts, feelings, intuitions, memories, insights, desires and revelations - has been pieced together by the information processing brain, from the stream of neuron impulses, sensory data and individual cognitive elements scattered throughout its structures and neural pathways. .

Nothing enters consciousness as a finished whole. There is no direct and objective experience of reality. Everything that the brain perceives has been pieced together by the information processing brain, from the stream of neuron impulses, sensory data and individual cognitive elements.

The notion that our experience of reality - and this, for that matter, all our experiences - is only a "secondary" image of what could (or could not) be objectively real raises deep questions about the very foundations of human existence. and the neurobiological nature of spiritual experience. For example, our studies involving Tibetan meditation practitioners and Franciscan nuns showed that experiences that seemed to them spiritual were directly related to the observed increase in the activity of certain areas of the brain. Reductionists might draw the following conclusion from this: religious experience is a figment of the imagination of the nervous system, so that God physically lives "in your mind." But a deep understanding of how the brain and mind piece together reality and experience it suggests something else.

If God exists and if He appeared to you in some form incarnated, you could not experience His presence in any other way than through the image of reality created by your nervous system.

Imagine, for example, that your brain is being examined by imaging. During the study, you are invited to eat a large piece of homemade apple pie. While you are enjoying the taste, researchers are getting a picture of neurological activity in different information processing centers, where the input from the senses is converted into specific neurobiological patterns associated with the experience of eating a delicious pie: the olfactory zones register the pleasant smell of apples and cinnamon, the visual zones create an image of a wonderful golden brown, touch centers give a picture of something crisp and soft at the same time, and at the same time, the taste zone tells you that you are eating something sweet with rich taste sensations. The SPECT will show much the same picture as we observed in the study of meditating Buddhists and praying nuns, and we will see bright spots on the computer monitor. The experience of eating a delicious pie is literally in your brain, but that doesn't mean the pie is illusory or unrealistic.
Similarly, when we find out what neurobiological processes are behind a spiritual experience, this does not mean that we declare this experience unreal. If, say, God exists, and if He has appeared to you in some form incarnated, you could not experience His presence in any other way than through the image of reality created by the nervous system. You would need an auditory analyzer to hear His voice, a visual system to see His face, and cognitive processing to understand what He meant to tell you by this phenomenon. And even if He speaks to you mystically, in addition to words, you will need cognitive functions to grasp the meaning of what is said, and an influx of information from the emotional centers of the brain so that you can experience deep admiration and awe. Here, with neuroscience, everything is clear: God cannot enter your head in any other way than through the neural pathways of the brain.

God cannot exist as a concept or reality anywhere outside of your brain.

Accordingly, God cannot exist as a concept or reality anywhere outside of your brain. In this sense, both spiritual experience and ordinary experiences of material nature become a reality for the brain in the same way - through the processing of information in the brain and through the work of the cognitive abilities of the mind. Whatever the ultimate nature of spiritual experiences—whether they are reflections of an authentic spiritual reality or simply images that are purely neurobiological in nature—all significant events relating to human spirituality take place in the mind. In other words, the mind, by definition, has a mystical nature. We cannot say with certainty how such abilities arose in him, but we can find their neurobiological basis: some of the most important structures and functions, primarily the autonomic nervous system, the limbic system, and the complex analytical functions of the brain.

Excitation and appeasement systems

The arousal and tranquility systems are the most important part of the body's nervous system, and their fibers serve as an important neurological bridge between the brain and every other part of the body. Receiving information from various structures of the brain, the autonomic nervous system is involved in the regulation of such important functions as heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and digestion. At the same time, since it is associated with higher structures, it has a strong influence on many other aspects of brain activity, including the generation of emotions and moods.
The autonomic nervous system has two divisions: the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. The sympathetic nervous system is the basis for the bodily “fight or flight” response, which spikes adrenaline at the moment when we need to defend ourselves from danger or run away. This arousal system is also activated by positive experiences - because of this, for example, the hunter's heart begins to beat rapidly when he approaches his prey. This also happens when a person approaches his sexual partner. In fact, any situation that has something to do with survival activates the sympathetic system. Whether it is a new potential opportunity or whether it is a threat, the reaction is the same - it is bringing the body into a state of readiness, excitement. At the physiological level, this is expressed in an increase in heart rate, an increase in blood pressure, an increase in breathing, and an increase in muscle tone. In a state of excitement, the body expends energy generously in order to be able to take decisive action.
Since the sympathetic system prepares the body for action, we will refer to it, including its connections to the brain and adrenal glands, as the excitatory system.
The excitatory system has its own counterbalance - the parasympathetic nervous system. It is responsible for the conservation of energy and for the harmonious balance in the work of the basic functions of the body. It regulates sleep, induces relaxation, promotes digestion and controls cell growth. Because it has a calming and stabilizing effect on the body, we will refer to the parasympathetic nervous system, along with some of the structures associated with it in the upper and lower parts of the brain, as the appeasement system.
In general, the systems of excitation and appeasement operate on the principle of antagonism: when the activity of one of them increases, the activity of the other decreases. This allows the body and brain to work smoothly and respond appropriately to any new situation. Suppose, when danger arises, the pacifying system gives way to the excitation system, allowing it to expend energy, which physiologically prepares the body for action. Similarly, the excitation system takes a backseat when the threat is past, and then, under the action of the appeasement system, blood pressure decreases, breathing slows down, and the body begins to accumulate the necessary reserves of fuel and energy.
These two systems, as a rule, cede power to one another more than once in the course of carrying out everyday affairs. However, in some cases, both systems work simultaneously, when something forces them to become maximally activated, and this is observed when alternative states of consciousness arise. These unusual states of altered consciousness are triggered by some strong physical or mental trigger, such as dancing, running, or sustained focus. These states can be triggered consciously with the help of special actions directly related to religion - rituals or meditation. The fact that both intentionally induced and involuntary states of this kind are very similar indicates that the autonomic nervous system is directly related to the potential ability of the brain to experience spiritual experiences.
We believe that, in fact, the autonomic nervous system is fundamental to the emergence of spiritual experiences. Many past studies have shown that practices such as tantric yoga or transcendental meditation are associated with significant changes in heart rate and breathing, as well as blood pressure levels - all of which are controlled by the autonomic nervous system.

The answer to the question of what neuroscience studies is rather short. Neurobiology is a branch of biology and science that studies the structure, function and physiology of the brain. The very name of this science says that the main objects of study are nerve cells - neurons that make up the entire nervous system.

• What is the brain made of besides neurons?
• History of the development of neuroscience
• Neurobiological research methods

What is the brain made of besides neurons?

In the structure of the nervous system, in addition to the neurons themselves, various cellular glia also take part, which account for most of the volume of the brain and other parts of the nervous system. Glia are designed to serve and closely interact with neurons, ensuring their normal functioning and vital activity. Therefore, modern neurobiology of the brain also studies neuroglia, and their various functions to provide neurons.

History of the development of neuroscience

The modern history of the development of neurobiology as a science began with a chain of discoveries at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries:

1. Representatives and supporters of J.-P. Muller of the German school of physiology (G. von Helmholtz, K. Ludwig, L. Hermann, E. Dubois-Reymond, J. Bernstein, K. Bernard, etc.) were able to prove the electrical nature of the signals transmitted by nerve fibers.
2. Yu. Bernshtein in 1902 proposed a membrane theory describing the excitation of the nervous tissue, where the decisive role was assigned to potassium ions.
3. His contemporary E. Overton in the same year discovered that sodium is necessary for the generation of excitation in the nerve. But contemporaries did not appreciate the works of Overton.
4. K. Bernard and E. Dubois-Reymond suggested that brain signals are transmitted through chemicals.
5. The Russian scientist V.Yu. He also experimentally confirmed that the electric current has an irritating physical and chemical effect.
6. At the origins of electroencephalography was V.V. Pravdich-Neminsky, who in 1913 was able to record for the first time from the surface of the skull of a dog the electrical activity of its brain. And the first recording of a human electroencephalogram was made in 1928 by the Austrian psychiatrist G. Berger.
7. In the studies of E. Huxley, A. Hodgkin and K. Cole, the mechanisms of excitability of neurons at the cellular and molecular level were revealed. The first in 1939 was able to measure how the excitation of the membrane of giant squid axons changes its ionic conductivity.
8. In the 60s at the Institute of Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR under the leadership of ac. P. Kostyuk were the first to register ion currents at the moment of excitation of the membranes of neurons of vertebrates and invertebrates.

Then the history of the development of neurobiology was replenished with the discovery of many components involved in the process of intracellular signaling:

• phosphatases;
• kinases;
• enzymes involved in the synthesis of second messengers;
• numerous G-proteins and others.

In the work of E. Neer and B. Sakman, studies of single ion channels in frog muscle fibers, which were activated by acetylcholine, were described. Further development of research methods made it possible to study the activity of various single ion channels present in cell membranes. In the last 20 years, molecular biology methods have been widely introduced into the foundations of neurobiology, which made it possible to understand chemical structure various proteins involved in the processes of intracellular and intercellular signaling. With the help of electronic and advanced optical microscopy, as well as laser technologies, it became possible to study the fundamentals of the physiology of nerve cells and organelles at the macro and micro levels.

Video about neuroscience - the science of the brain:

Neurobiological research methods

Theoretical research methods in the neurobiology of the human brain are largely based on the study of the CNS of animals. The human brain is the product of a long general evolution of life on the planet, which began in the Archean period and continues to this day. Nature has gone through countless variants of the central nervous system and its constituent elements. Thus, it was noticed that neurons with processes and the processes occurring in them in humans remained exactly the same as in much more primitive animals (fish, arthropods, reptiles, amphibians, etc.).

In the development of neurobiology in recent years, intravital sections of the brain of guinea pigs and newborn rats are increasingly used. Artificially cultured nervous tissue is often used.

What can modern methods of neuroscience show? First of all, these are the mechanisms of operation of individual neurons and their processes. To register the bioelectrical activity of the processes or the neurons themselves, special techniques of microelectrode technology are used. It, depending on the tasks and subjects of research, may look different.

Two types of microelectrodes are most commonly used: glass and metal. For the latter, tungsten wire with a thickness of 0.3 to 1 mm is often taken. To record the activity of a single neuron, a microelectrode is inserted into a manipulator capable of moving it very precisely in the animal's brain. The manipulator can work separately or be attached to the object's skull, depending on the tasks being solved. In the latter case, the device must be miniature, which is why it is called a micromanipulator.

The recorded bioelectrical activity depends on the radius of the microelectrode tip. If this diameter does not exceed 5 microns, then it becomes possible to register the potential of a single neuron if, in this case, the electrode tip approaches the studied nerve cell by about 100 microns. If the tip of the microelectrode has twice the diameter, then the simultaneous activity of tens or even hundreds of neurons is recorded. Also widespread are microelectrodes made of glass capillaries, the diameters of which range from 1 to 3 mm.

What interesting things do you know about neuroscience? What do you think of this science? Tell us about it in the comments.

The science of the brain is one. It includes not only physiology, but practically all biological and a number of medical disciplines, physics with its technical achievements, chemistry with its possibilities for the synthesis of new drugs, mathematics and computer science, because it is time to try to systematize the huge array of accumulated data and build, at least in the first approximation , the information theory of the brain. And, of course, this science includes psychology and philosophy.

One of the first who began to build a bridge from physiology to psychology were our great scientists Ivan Sechenov and Ivan Pavlov, who gave a powerful impetus to the development of the Russian physiological school. Fortunately, she survived. Achievements modern science about the brain are amazing. They are now bringing to life grandiose national projects aimed at human health and the creation of new information technologies(The US and China are already starting to implement them). This challenge of time must be accepted by Russia. We have the scientific potential for this. All you need is strong support. What areas of neuroscience research are most important to us? It seems to me that there are at least six current directions in the study of the brain.

An ion channel is a membrane protein "inserted" into a biological membrane - a key molecular "chip" of a living cell.

EVOLUTION AND INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT

It is impossible to understand the nature of the human brain with its higher mental abilities without understanding the nature of the evolutionary process. Incidentally, the term "evolutionary physiology" was proposed in 1914 by the zoologist Alexei Severtsov (academician since 1920). And the formation of this fundamental scientific direction is connected with domestic science, with the names of physiologists Academician Leon Orbeli and Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences Khachatur Koshtoyants. In 1956, Orbeli created the Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry in Leningrad, having achieved the assignment of the name of Ivan Sechenov to it. For more than half a century, active research has been carried out here in the field of evolutionary physiology. At the same time, consideration is given to various levels complexity of living systems. Thus, according to the idea developed by Academician Yuri Natochin and Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Veselkin, the system of chemical regulation and signaling, which arose at the earliest stages of the evolutionary process in primitive unicellular organisms, turned out to be in demand when multicellular organisms appeared, up to primates and humans. At the same time, it evolved into a hormonal and specialized neuroendocrine system. The latter maintains homeostasis, regulates essential functions brain and visceral (related to internal organs) systems.

The study of the mechanism of ontogenesis is the most topical direction in modern brain science. Academician Mikhail Ugryumov is successfully dealing with this problem at the Institute of Developmental Biology. N. K. Koltsova of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow), actively collaborating with French neurobiologists.

The evolution of consciousness is another relevant and exciting area of ​​modern neuroscience. If animals have "primary consciousness", then people - largely due to the presence of language - its highest form. That is why the nature of human consciousness cannot be understood without knowledge of the genetic foundations and the evolutionary development of language. The question of how and when language arose remains open. Two possibilities are discussed: either he is the product of a genetic "explosion", or the result of a gradual, natural selection of small mutations. Regardless of the answer, experts put on the evolutionary tree of the order of primates, families of hominids, genus Homo sapiens dating as follows: the neuroanatomical substratum of language arose in Homo erectus about 2 million years ago; the proto-language appeared in Homo habilis about 1 million years ago; finally, a fully formed language in Homo sapiens dates back to about 75 thousand years ago. The most interesting neurolinguistic research at the intersection of physiology and linguistics is actively conducted at St. Petersburg University by Doctor of Biology and Doctor of Philology Tatyana Chernigovskaya.

MOLECULAR PHYSIOLOGY

The adult brain contains about 100 billion nerve cells and about 100 trillion connections between them, called synapses. When talking about the processing of information in the brain, about "neural networks", it must be borne in mind that "networks" are a purely informational concept. In fact, the nervous system is not a network at all, as previously thought, but 100 billion individual cells in contact with each other.

The transfer of information between them is carried out using electrical and chemical signals. One of the key tasks of molecular physiology is to understand exactly how an electrical signal (we are not talking about an electric current, of course, but about ionic currents - positively charged ions of potassium, sodium, calcium and negatively charged ions, for example, chlorine) propagates along a long (axon) ) and short (dendrite) processes of the nerve cell and how it is transmitted chemically at the point of contact (at the synapse).

The carriers of chemical transmission (neurotransmitters or neurotransmitters) are low-molecular compounds - acetylcholine, glutamate, dopamine and a number of others.

The "elemental base" of a nerve cell includes the so-called "membrane proteins", as if "inserted" into the biological membrane. Of these proteins built into the membrane, let us dwell on ion channels (through which positively or negatively charged ions - cations or anions are selectively transferred) and on receptors - membrane proteins, on which neurotransmitter molecules "sit down" and interact with them. The composition of protein receptors includes both, in fact, the receptor part, which "recognizes" the neurotransmitter molecule, and the channel part - ions are transferred through it. "Classic" ion channels are gated, i.e. open and close by changing the electrical voltage across the membrane. It is the ion channels that ensure the propagation of an electrical signal (nerve impulse) along the processes of nerve cells. Information transmitted from neurons to neurons is encoded by a sequence of such impulses. Essentially, the sequence of impulses is the information "language" of the brain.

The composition of a huge family of protein receptors includes the so-called G-proteins, or signal proteins, because they serve as universal intermediaries in the intracellular transmission of light, chemical (taste, smell), nerve, hormonal signals to other proteins responsible for one or another specific function of a living cell. . Of the "superfamily" of G-protein-binding receptors, the light-sensitive visual protein rhodopsin is the most studied. Its primary structure (amino acid sequence) was established in the early 1980s by Academician Yuri Ovchinnikov and his collaborators at the Moscow Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, which is now named after M. M. Shemyakin and Yu. A. Ovchinnikov.

An urgent task of molecular physiology today is a detailed description of the three-dimensional structure of channels and receptors, understanding the intricacies of their interaction with other proteins. It is obvious that only a fundamental knowledge of the "elemental base" of the cell will make it possible to understand the nature of its disturbances. There is simply no other way to find out the underlying causes of diseases and successfully treat them, as well as to create new drugs, including neuro- and psychotropic ones.

For outstanding advances in the study of the structure and function of ion channels and receptor proteins over the past decades, more than one Nobel Prize. Quite a few scientific schools, laboratories and groups are successfully working in this area. Thus, Academician Platon Kostyuk made a huge contribution to the study of ion channels. His disciples can now be found in Russia, Ukraine, and in many other countries. One of the brightest representatives of this school is Oleg Kryshtal, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. His work, including on the proton-sensitive ion channels he discovered, is published in the most prestigious scientific journals. The scientific school of Doctor of Medical Sciences Boris Khodorov (Institute of General Pathology and Pathophysiology of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences), whose works on ion channels and excitability of nerve cells have become classics, is widely known. Research of the highest class in this area of ​​molecular physiology is being conducted by Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Galina Mozhaeva and her colleagues at the Institute of Cytology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg).

An exceptionally important direction is the study of model systems, i.e. artificial membranes and ion channels "inserted" into them. Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yury Chizmadzhev and his students at the Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry named after I.I. A. N. Frumkin RAS (Moscow).

Now a little more about synaptic receptors that "recognize" and interact with neurotransmitter molecules. There are about 100 trillion synaptic contacts in the brain. But the synapse is not just a contact, but the most complex molecular "machinery". It contains all the processes that lead to the main types of brain activity: perception, movement, learning, behavior and memory. The synapse is such an important structure that its study has resulted in a separate area of ​​neuroscience - synaptology, in which Russian scientists occupy a worthy place.

Back in 1946, the aforementioned Khachatur Koshtoyants and Tigran Turpaev (academician since 1992) published a pioneering article in the journal Nature, where they first presented results indicating the protein nature of the synaptic receptor for the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. In the 60s - early 80s of the XX century. world-class work on spinal cord synapses and the evolution of synaptic transmission was performed by Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences Alexander Shapovalov from the Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry. I. M. Sechenov.

And recently, employees of the same Institute - Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Lev Magazanik and his student Denis Tikhonov, Doctor of Biological Sciences - published a paper on the evolution of glutamate receptors - the most important class of protein receptors in the central nervous system and brain.

Glutamate is a key excitatory neurotransmitter, and the receptor for it, as it turned out, is one of the most ancient: its precursors are found even in plants and prokaryotes (primitive unicellular non-nuclear organisms). Knowledge of the spatial organization and molecular physiology of these receptors allows Magazanik's laboratory to conduct a meaningful, targeted search for new neuro- and psychotropic drugs. Some of them are already being tested on animals.

Another example of progress in understanding the evolution, structure, and function of the protein receptor is the study of the acetylcholine receptor. Like glutamate, acetylcholine is also a key neurotransmitter. Priority research in this "hot" area of ​​synaptology is being conducted by Corresponding Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences Viktor Tsetlin and Evgeny Grishin at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry. M. M. Shemyakin and Yu. A. Ovchinnikov.

Original and at the same time traditional direction synaptology - the study of the synapse between nerve and muscle cells. It is successfully developed by RAS Corresponding Member Evgeny Nikolsky and RAMS Corresponding Member Andrey Zefirov (Kazan Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics RAS and Kazan State Medical University).

I repeat: the synapse is the most complex molecular "machinery". In its violations lie the causes of nervous and mental disorders; the neuro- and psychopharmacology of the present and future is connected with the synapse.

PHYSIOLOGY OF SENSORY SYSTEMS

In our country, this is traditionally one of the strong areas. At its origins were academicians physiologist Leon Orbeli and physicist Sergei Vavilov. It was they who in the 1930s gave a powerful impetus to research, first in the field of the physiology of vision, which they themselves were engaged in, and then hearing and other sensory modalities. There are three main stages in the operation of any sensory system. The first is reception, i.e. perception and transformation of the energy of external influence - light (vision), mechanical (touch, hearing) or chemical (taste, smell) into a physiological signal. The second is signal transmission and information processing at all levels of the sensory system: from the receptor to specialized subcortical and cortical parts of the brain. The third is the formation in the cerebral cortex of a subjective image of the objective external world. Each stage is the subject of research by specialists in various fields of knowledge.

Sensory photoreception is successfully studied in several laboratories, including Doctors of Biological Sciences Viktor Govardovsky at the Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry. I. M. Sechenov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Oleg Sineshchekov and Pavel Filippov at Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov, the author of this article at the Institute of Biochemical Physics. N. M. Emanuel RAS. Work on taste reception is being successfully carried out in the laboratory of Stanislav Kolesnikov at the Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Pushchino Understanding the "molecular machinery" of sensory reception opens up new possibilities for both medicine and technology. For example, the results of studying the primary photochemical reactions in the molecule of the light-sensitive visual protein rhodopsin may be promising for the creation of high-speed devices for information processing. The fact is that this photochemical reaction takes place in rhodopsin in an ultrashort time - 100 - 200 fs (1 femtosecond - 10 - 15 s). Recently, in the joint work of the laboratories of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Oleg Sarkisov at the Institute of Chemical Physics. N. N. Semenov RAS, Academician Mikhail Kirpichnikov at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry. M. M. Shemyakin and Yu. A. Ovchinnikov of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the author of this article showed that this reaction is not only ultrafast, but also photoreversible. This means that, in the image and likeness of rhodopsin, a molecular "photoswitch" or "photochip" operating in the femto- and picosecond time scales can be created.

Transmission and processing of sensory information, recognition and formation of a subjective image of the external world, evaluation of its biological and semantic significance is a rapidly developing area of ​​sensory physiology. In this area, we have a fruitful laboratory at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which until the beginning of 2010 was headed by Academician Igor Shevelev, as well as the laboratories of Doctor of Medical Sciences Yuri Shelepin, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yakov Altman at the Institute of Physiology. IP Pavlov RAS (St. Petersburg), Doctor of Biological Sciences Alexander Supin at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution. A. N. Severtsov RAS (Moscow).

PHYSIOLOGY OF MOVEMENT

Sechenov's words that "all external manifestations of brain activity can be reduced to muscle movement" are true even today. Modern physiology of movement is an area of ​​interest for physiologists, mathematicians and specialists in the field of control theory.

A key role in the organization of motor behavior is played by feedback, which makes it possible to evaluate the progress of the performance and the result of the movement and, if necessary, correct them. Our outstanding physiologists Nikolai Bernshtein, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, and Academician Pyotr Anokhin were the first to realize this back in the 1930s-1940s. Subsequent studies carried out in the 1960s by academic physiologist Viktor Gurfinkel and mathematician Israel Gelfand, together with their students, became classics. The results obtained then formed the basis for the creation of a walking robot, new methods for the rehabilitation of patients with spinal cord injuries. The work of Grigory Orlovsky, Fedor Severin and Mark Shik, employees of the Institute for Information Transmission Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences, published in 1967, in which the spinal generator of stepping movements was first described, also became a classic.

Most recently, Doctor of Biological Sciences Yuri Gerasimenko from the Laboratory of Movement Physiology of the Institute of Physiology named after. I.P. Pavlov Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, together with American physiologists, showed that electrical stimulation of the spinal cord in combination with pharmacological action caused well-coordinated stepping movements in rats, i.e. walking, with full body weight support (these results are published in the Neurobiological scientific journal"Nature Neuroscience" in 2009)

The success of animal experiments gives hope to thousands of paralyzed spinal patients for at least partial rehabilitation.

The physiology of movement continues to be our subject of active study.

The physiology of the motor system is the most important component of gravitational physiology, to which our scientists have made an exceptionally large contribution. Studies under weightless conditions made it possible to determine the role of brain systems, primarily sensory ones, in ensuring normal motor behavior. The laboratory of Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Inesa Kozlovskaya at the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences is actively working in this direction.

Understanding the physiological mechanisms of movement is the basis of neurology, and in this important medical and physiological area, the laboratory of Dr. Marat Ioffe at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences has been successfully working for a long time.

PHYSIOLOGICAL BASES OF MENTAL FUNCTIONS

This direction is one of the most exciting, rapidly developing and, one might say, revolutionary. Remarkable progress has been made in this area in recent years and, perhaps more importantly, new questions have been posed that remain to be answered. The bridge thrown by Ivan Sechenov and Ivan Pavlov from physiology to psychology is turning into the general path of modern neuroscience. What is the main thing here from the point of view of physiological mechanisms? The fact that both synapses and genes are involved in them, both intercellular interactions and intracellular "machinery". In this regard, it is impossible not to recall the great Spanish histologist Ramón y Cajal. Back in 1894, he expressed the idea that learning is based on an increase in the efficiency of the synapse (now this has been established using thin modern methods). Moreover, repeated activation leads to even greater efficiency.

Of exceptional importance is the electrophysiological study of the mechanisms of learning and memory. In our country, it is successfully developing, for example, in the laboratory of Vladimir Skrebitsky, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Russian Academy of Medical Sciences (Scientific Center for Neurology of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences): drugs are being developed here that improve memory, impaired in brain diseases or weakening due to aging.

Since the 1970s, progress in the study of the cellular and molecular mechanisms of memory has been largely associated with the study of the simple nervous systems of invertebrates. Firstly, they are a convenient object for various kinds of experiments, and secondly, they are extremely interesting from the point of view of evolution and comparative physiology. One of the first who studied in detail back in the 1960s - 1970s synaptic transmission and the diversity of neurotransmitters in molluscs was Dmitry Sakharov, Doctor of Biological Sciences, at the Institute of Developmental Biology named after. N. K. Koltsova RAS. Among the leading scientific teams studying the mechanisms of learning, memory and behavior in invertebrates is the laboratory of Doctor of Biology Pavel Balaban at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Using modern electrophysiological and optical methods for recording the activity of cochlear neurons, he and his colleagues managed to describe the organization of nerve networks in simple terms. nervous systems. For the construction of a future information theory of the brain, the accumulation of experimental data of this kind is of exceptional value.

Both synapses and intracellular "machinery" are involved in the mechanisms of learning and memory. Short-term memory (minutes - tens of minutes) depends on conformational changes in the protein molecules of synaptic structures, while long-term memory (days and years) is due to gene expression, the synthesis of new proteins, RNA molecules, and the emergence of new synapses. The question is, which genes are activated during learning, and what exactly do they do in nerve cells? In this direction, the laboratory of the corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Konstantin Anokhin is successfully working in this direction at the Institute of Normal Physiology. P. K. Anokhin RAMS (Moscow).

Striking advances have been made in understanding localization various kinds memory through new brain imaging techniques. First of all, we are talking about functional magnetic resonance imaging, although in our country it is still used mainly in the clinic. As for positron emission tomography, it is successfully used for fundamental research by Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Svyatoslav Medvedev and his staff at the Institute of the Human Brain. N. P. Bekhtereva RAS (St. Petersburg).

Using these methods, it was shown that memory is not diffusely distributed throughout the brain, as previously thought, but is localized in certain parts of it. This is a fundamentally important conclusion for physiology (neuro- and psychophysiology) and medicine (neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry).

Now about consciousness - a problem at the junction of at least three sciences - physiology, psychology and philosophy. What is the main thing here? Awareness of the most important position, according to which CONSCIOUSNESS is a process, an action, and not "something" that lies passively in the brain. No one can now give a concise and clear definition of consciousness. Quite a few hypotheses have been put forward regarding its mechanisms. One of them was proposed in the 1980s - 1990s by Alexei Ivanitsky, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology, Russian Academy of Sciences). Its essence is that essential element consciousness - a subjective image of the external world - arises in the projection cortex of the brain as a result of the synthesis of sensory information coming from outside with the information contained in memory. Comparison of the flow of new, incoming and stored information is a key moment in the "stream of consciousness". Synthesis occurs as a result of the circular movement of nerve impulses. Similar ideas were developed somewhat later by other scientists, including the Nobel laureate in 1972 Gerald Edelman (USA).

Concluding this section, it should be emphasized that the problem of "consciousness and the brain" requires the combination of natural science and humanitarian knowledge.

NEUROINFORMATICS

It becomes obvious that the scientific policy of developed countries in the first half of the XXI century. will focus on the study of the brain and its higher functions. The most important role in solving these problems belongs to neuroinformatics. Mathematics and computation in neuroinformatics are unthinkable apart from neuroscience.

The material substrate for the transmission, processing and analysis of information in the brain is electrical nerve impulses in synapses - from neuron to neuron. Therefore, when one speaks of information processing in "neural networks", one is talking about understanding the codes of impulses, carrying information, and about the structure of these "networks" themselves, i.e. communication systems between neurons. In addition, it is necessary to understand the "molecular machinery" of individual neurons. This is necessary because many physicochemical processes occurring inside the cell not only ensure its vital activity, but, apparently, simultaneously perform the role of computational operations.

Despite the huge scope of work in the field of neuroinformatics, it should be recognized that a satisfactory mathematical language for describing non-formalizable living systems - a living cell or "nerve networks" - has not yet been created. This is one of the most "hot spots" of modern brain science. Computational neurosciences around the world are very active. We have groups and laboratories successfully working in this direction in Moscow, Rostov-on-Don, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod. But, unlike the USA, many countries of Europe and Asia, they, unfortunately, are extremely few.

As for practical applications, in particular medical ones, they are available, and quite impressive. One of them is the technology of direct connection of the brain with an external technical device. Now systems have been created that can transmit information in one direction - from the brain to the computer. For example, by registering evoked potentials from certain areas of the cerebral cortex and transmitting them to an external device, a patient who is unable to speak and move can communicate the necessary information to medical personnel at a distance. For the foreseeable future, the standard operating procedure will be to implant an electronic system in the brain to control wheelchair, a prosthetic arm or leg.

In all these cases, we are talking about the registration and transmission of reliably detectable electrical signals (potentials) generated by certain areas of the brain. Work in this applied area is carried out by several teams. For example, in the laboratory of Doctor of Biology Alexander Frolov at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, original methods for the early diagnosis of movement diseases have been proposed.

Another medical application is neuroprosthetics. Millions of patients have already installed hearing chips that perceive sound and transmit information directly to the neurons of the corresponding centers of the brain. As a result, deaf people can hear and understand speech. In the future, the appearance of visual and olfactory electronic prostheses is possible. Attempts are being made to transmit information from outside, in addition to the sense organs, directly to the brain.

Another rapidly developing area of ​​practical application of neuroinformatics is robotics. In the 1970s - 1990s, it was in this area that pioneering work was carried out within the framework of the national lunar program. We are talking about creating a robot capable of moving over rough terrain. At first, the task seemed almost impossible. It was possible to solve it by understanding the mechanisms of organization of the motor activity of animals. A team of physiologists led by Academician Viktor Gurfinkel (Institute for Information Transmission Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences) and mechanics headed by Academician Dmitry Okhotsimsky and Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Evgeny Devyanin (Institute of Applied Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Mechanics of Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov) created the famous "Six-legged" - a mechanical "insect". She became the prototype of many modern, sophisticated anthropomorphic robots, capable, for example, of playing table tennis (Japan). Work in this direction (motion control) continues in the laboratory of Doctor of Biology Yuri Levik at the Institute for Information Transmission Problems. A. A. Kharkevich RAS.

As regards the creation artificial intelligence and computers of a new generation, then specialists of various profiles are employed in this rapidly developing area. Of course, today's supercomputers are in many ways superior to the capabilities of the human brain. But unlike Homo sapiens, even the most perfect of them do not possess intelligence. However, according to a number of researchers in the field of informatics, this problem is technical and will be solved in the relatively near future.

A wonderful or terrible future awaits humanity? Rapid advances in the field of neuroscience are leading to this key ethical issue. The amazing possibilities that open up for influencing the human personality and the social life of society, the prospect of creating anthropomorphic "cognitive computers" and much more inevitably raise this "damned" question. The answer to it, as has repeatedly happened in history, depends not only and not so much on scientists, but on society itself.

Academician Mikhail OSTROVSKII, President of the Physiological Society. I. P. Pavlova, head of the laboratory of the Institute of Biochemical Physics. N. M. Emanuel RAS