A sharing by Alan Ho Chok Chan
Basic Building Blocks of Human Mind
Language What distinguishes Man from Hominids ( the great apes and chimpanzees ) and other animals is Language.
The Language Centre is situated in a few scattered areas around the side of the brain roughly above the location of your ears. There is a forward centre ( Broca’s area ) closely connected to the motor cortex, and responsible for the movements necessary for producing sound and speech. There is the Wernicke’s area and Angular gyrus further back close to the Auditory or Hearing cortex responsible for comprehension and meaning of the spoken word.
Language, is the basic building block of Memory. All memory is stored and retrieved this way : via spoken or virtual words and speech.
Man communicates via Language, he thinks and enters others’ mind and influence their thoughts and belief by Language. Our whole civilization is built upon Language, spoken and written.
Language opens up a whole new world of possibilities : you mix and match, juggle up words into new ideas, then you progress into planning and visualize the future, you get into abstract thoughts like honesty, fairness, equality and so on, you construct mental concepts like morality, justice, God…and a whole system of social constructs arose like Codes of behaviour, Legal system, religion…and Man progresses.
Self Consciousness This is closely related to, and runs parallel with speech development.
Babies are not born with speech, but are tuned in to human speech from birth, some authorities believe even in utero : fetuses showed affinity for the human voice, especially the mother’s, and squirms and kicks in approval when hearing a familiar story whispered by the mother. Babbling and gruntings starts from a few week of age, followed by formed speech after the age of one. This coincides with the rapid development of the frontal lobe, and also the development of self-consciousness. Language development further reinforces the concept of ‘I’ or self, allow the child to recognize himself as a distinct entity in a world of ‘others’.
Mirror Neurons Researchers in the University of Parma first discovered it in primates, and fMRI documented the presence in Man. Mirror neurons are brain cells which are activated when a person performs a certain act, and they are also activated when the same action is being done by others. The evolutionary significance is to allow Man to intuitively understand what others are feeling and thinking. So, when you see a person crying or suffering, you feel and understand the emotions behind. It is believed to be the basis of human empathy and compassion. Thus another piece of the puzzle of Human consciousness, conscience, and our Humanity has been unraveled.
The seat of consciousness ( or Mind ) The human brain is an amazing organ : it can sense and collate different sensory inputs from the world ; it can store a wide range of data to form short and long-term memory, it can retrieve the memory at will ; it can calculate, plan, imagine and formulate a future…but it is not these that makes Man so special, after all, the computer can do many of these functions better and faster, and many animals have keener sense of smell, hearing and vision.
Reference readings :
Jostein Gaarder : Sophie’s World
Rita Carter : Mapping the Brain
Dr Alan Ho Chok Chan is a Paediatrician in private Family Practice. He also spends time golfing, swimming, playing tennis, wine tasting, playing guitar and singing. He is also a bibliophile and a voracious reader.
