The following is a chunk of my thesis written for the UCLA Sociology department. I conducted six 30-45 minute interviews with UCLA neuroscientists asking them two main questions: 1. How do you conceive of the brain? and 2. How do you conceive of your own brain? The text below is a discussion of the responses to the second question.



Aaron: The thing that is special, maybe, about our brains is that we can perceive not only what is going on outside of our bodies, it can perceive the outside world, but it can perceive its own actions. It can keep track of itself. Basically it can be introspective and so when, when you ask me what comes to mind when you bring up the concept of brain perceiving itself the first that comes to mind is that maybe that's something that's very very important...Again it seems like the sociality is a very important thing but, yeah so, I remember being an undergrad and sitting in one of my first neuroscience/cog. sci. classes and thinking "man this is too crazy right now, I am learning about the thing that's in my head, that's doing the learning". There's this kind of infinite regress thing going on and that just kind of really fascinated me that we can really do that.

The knowledge provided by the life and social sciences allows individuals to perceive themselves as embodiments of the structures and processes these sciences outline through conceptual metaphors and image schemas, altering experience and identity in corresponding fashions. Nikolas Rose reflects upon this tendency with his concept of the neurochemical self: a fashioning of identity based on a model of brain neurotransmission that sees its means of intervention (psychiatric, psychopharmacological, therapeutic) as evolving in tandem with its research (10). Rose's model, along with those like it, explores the construction of self in terms of a lay scientific knowledge that is dispersed through forms of institutional influence and power (e.g. media, psychiatry, politics). Yet what about those who produce said knowledge, those right at the source? For these individuals, the neuroscientists, the achievement of brain embodiment is a system of complex interplay between self, culture, and one's vested interests in scientific knowledge.

Aaron's statement above is indicative of this interplay. He simultaneously references the functional efficacy of the brain (introspection, perception of the outside world), the role of sociality and culture in mediating brain function, and his own introspective cognitive experiences based on his intellectual and research interests. As an investigator of consciousness and language, Aaron perceives hierarchical levels of cognitive functions to be important in introspection. Specifically, he discusses the idea that, on one level, the brain's global function can produce a consciousness that, on another, can understand and reflect upon its embodiment in physical space and, on another still, intuit its own production as coming from its very physicality, all the while mediating this form of infinite regress through the concept of the self. This is a unique form of social relationship. The brain is provided with some form of anthropomorphic agency. It can "see" and "learn" in such a way that allows it to function as an actor in a social narrative. Yet, as Aaron notes, it is not given enough agency to constrain and make sensible the interaction. The brain does have the capability to provide the necessary social emotions and norms that dictate a normal interaction. Instead it is given a form of partial agency that, much like a broken faucet lever, allows its system of interactions to spiral out entropically until its space is filled with water or, in this case, an infinite regress of thought.

This more abstract form of brain embodiment is rooted in perceptions of consciousness popular in the brain and cognitive sciences, along with philosophy, wherein the highest levels of mind are related to the physical brain through an inhibited social relationship. Aaron's levels of introspection create a unique form of an infinite loop, an idea made popular by Hofstadter (2007), in that it can continue endlessly if it is not intentionally ended. This form of interaction is not found in the human social world but instead, as Evan Thompson argues, constitutes a phenomenological issue he deems the "body-body problem". The problem is part of "the relationship between oneself and the world, for one's living body is part of the world and one's body as one subjectively lives it is part of one's sense of self" (244). How then is the co-existence of the body (or brain) in one's subjective and physical experiences dealt with? Thompson points toward what is know as the dynamic sensorimotor hypothesis. It dictates "changes in qualitative expression to be explained not just in terms of properties of sensory inputs and of the brain region that receives them, but in terms of dynamic patterns of interdependence between sensory stimulation and embodied activity" (Thompson quoting Hurley and Noë 145-146).

This concept of interdependence between sensory stimulation and embodied activity brings us back to the mirror neuron and the metaphor of the brain-as-a-mirror as touched upon by several participants. Ian explores his understanding of mirror neurons in his personal experience through the visual comparison of two brains, one performing motor actions and one perceiving motor actions:

Ian: I mean we already know that because of the mirror neuron system seeing and doing overlap a lot. Essentially the difference is that one engages the motor system and the other does not. So those two brains would already look very similar especially if you are a seeing a part of the picture and not the entire brain.

The mirror metaphor encompasses several aspects of human psychological and physical experience that have been historically thought to be divergent and irreconcilable, making their use in meaning creation more tantalizing to the researcher. Through the incorporation of motor, sensory, and cognitive processes, mirror neurons offer an economical and systematic mode of interpreting the more salient and obvious aspects of human psychological experience: the behavior and cognition of one's self along with that of others. As explored in the previous section, even the more atomistic of neuroscientists rely on high level expressions of the brain's output to make sense of their work. Indeed, Aaron found interest in his circadian nucleus through its link to behavior and regulation, not through an intrinsic allure to its biochemical makeup.

If analyzed through Lakoff's model, mirror neurons provide a source concept through which the target concepts of behavior and sensory processing can be understood. These target concepts come to be used by the individual to understand not only his or her own experience but that of others aswell. Therefore, the mirror concept parses both phenomenological and social experience and offers a powerful tool for neuroscientists to understand themselves and their work.

Furthermore, conceptual metaphors such as the mirror are capable of bringing scientific theory and individual experience closer together in the embodied brain. Much of the literature within the social and mind sciences is concerned with explicating the norms and patterns of behavior that we intimately know yet have difficulty reflecting on. When these intimate aspects of human life are systematically studied, the results are often complex and require a technical, non-intuitive language for their explanation. For example, the process of having a ball thrown to you and your catching it requires no great feat of mind and, when done, seems coherent and fluid. Upon closer analysis, especially when looked at through, say, the computational model of mind, the series of actions become messy and disjunct. One is forced to intellectually negotiate several distinct computational processes, each with its own unique function. It is not obvious, even upon formal reflection, how the visual system recognizes the ball or how motor control achieves the catch. How then can this perspective be used to understand one's embodied behavior and experience in real life? It cannot. As a psychologically taxing process the model lacks the economy and allure of a successful conceptual framework. This highlights the tendency of individuals to shy away from highly complex concepts in their informal speech and thought. When describing aspects of the whole brain and its function, the participants opted to use speech that acknowledged the brain's complexity but, after doing such, left it alone:

Bill: Something like "when you pick up this spoon here, it seems very easy but there is all this complex crap going on in your motor cortex on the left side of your brain which sends signals down which eventually cross in your spinal cord which then go down fibers all the way to your fingers and contract the muscles around there but do so in very coordinated ways".
Albert: At that level, at the physical level, the brain is this ultra complex you know just a conglomeration of these specialized cells that have over the course of evolution arranged themselves in such a fashion that we are able to walk and talk and move around and eat and breathe and have emotions and all those things.
Aaron: I don't think it's like pill-cure form type thing and I think it's really complex and there are a ton of different factors including social factors that a lot of people tend to overlook.
Ian: What strikes me is just the intricacy of the brain and the way it evolved as an organ is absolutely amazing, but it is also something that evolved so there definitely is an order to things and there is a reason for why things are where they are.

To be successfully used by an individual in understanding their own embodiment, scientific conceptual metaphors must be robust enough to add understanding to phenomenological experience and simple enough to not overly tax psychological function. The embodied lives of neuroscientists reflect the knowledge and concepts they work to produce day in and day out. At times their research interests and expertise help construct their social and phenomenological experiences. During others, popular conceptual metaphors such as mirror neurons are employed to make sense of sometimes overwhelmingly complex processes and behaviors. It is through this inversion of brain knowledge that embodiment is achieved; by opening a dialogue between personal experience, metaphorical thought, and scientific inquiry, neuroscientists construct and understand their world, their bodies, their selves.

Sources:
Duden, B. & Samarski, S. "'Pop-Genes': The Symbolic Effects of the Release of 'Genes' into Ordinary Speech" in Women in Biotechnology ed. Molfino, F. & Zucco, F. Springer Science+Media B.V. (2008).
Lakoff, G. "Image Metaphors". Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 2:3 (1987): 219-222.
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, (1980).
Rose, N. "Neurochemical selves". Society 41:1 (2003): 46-59.
Thompson, E. Mind in Life: Biology Phenomonology, and the Science of Mind. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Walter, W. The Living Brain. London: Penguin, 1953.