Cognition at Our Fingertips

the computational powers of physical digits and other unnerving findings

Symbioception

photo © Mary Koval on Unsplash

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The Fingers must be educated
The Thumb is born knowing

〰 Mark Chagall 〰

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In Search of the Seat of the Mind

In contemporary English, the words nerve and neuron can be synonyms. Both refer to the cells of the nervous system. This is not surprising since neuron is the Greek translation of the Latin original term for nerve.

Having said that, the English definitions have developed separately at different times, with the result that nerve now has a wider range of meanings.

Nerve was adopted in 14 c. from the Latin nervus (= sinew, tendon; cord, bowstring, string of a musical instrument). Now it can be used in the original sense of

sinew, tendon
cell or strand of the nervous system
power of endurance or control
audacity, boldness
a sore or sensitive point
nervous disposition or agitation (plural, nerves)
vein of a leaf

Neuron, from Greek neûron (= sinew, tendon, nerve) has been used in English since 1891, exclusively in medical language in the sense of cell of the nervous system.

That the nervous system is somehow connected with the mind has been known to physicians since antiquity.

Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.) “believed that the physician should study anatomy, in particular that of the spine and its relationship to the nervous system, which controls all functions of the body.” (Health care practices in Ancient Greece: The Hippocratic ideal = article by Christos Kleisiaris et al.)

The ancient Greeks were proponents of holistic medicine, asserting their belief that body and mind are inseparable. Hippocrates developed his philosophy around the motto ‘Healthy mind in a healthy body’. Although this statement may have had different connotations in the Ancient Greek healthcare system than our contemporary meaning, it proves that mental health was already on the agenda back then.

Mental health has to do with cognition. The nervous system controls all functions of the body. Therefore the (at least implicit) connection between mind and nervous system was on the radar of ancient human consciousness.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) shared the belief of ancient Egyptian physicians, who considered the heart as the central organ of perception. The heart, according to Aristotle, was home of the mind and soul.

Plato (427-347 BC) distinguished between three parts of the soul and assigned a different organ to each of them:::
lower passions, i.e. lust and greed live in the liver
higher passions such as pride, courage, anger and fear live in the heart
reason lives in the brain

Claudius Galenus of Pergamon (129-216 AD) ~ aka Galen ~ developed the so-called cephalocentric thesis. In his Anatomy of the Nervous System, Galen makes a clear distinction between nerves, tendons, and sinews.
He describes individual nerves and declares the brain as the origin of the entire nervous systems, all sensory perceptions, voluntary movements, and the seat of thinking.

Galen discovered the connections between the brain and the eyes (optic nerve) and brain and ears (vestibulocochlearis nerve).

Our search for the seat of the mind has not really progressed since Galen’s thesis of the cephalos as the centre of the mind 〰 until the recent rediscovery of Cajal’s sketches of the nervous system, proving that the seat of the mind is literally at our fingertips. (see the wordcast on 'Getting our Head Around the Brain')

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A Handy Vocabulary of Æsthetics

Æsthetics [from Greek aisthetikos = perception by the senses or the mind] was introduced into contemporary European by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in the sense of “science which treats of the conditions of sensuous perception.”

Aisthētēs was the Greek word for a ‘person who perceives’. In contemporary English aesthete has been filled with the meaning of a person who appreciates beauty and is sensitive to artistic expressions.

The original meaning of the Greek verbiont is partially preserved in the medical term anæsthesia [from Greek an = without + aisthēsis = sensation] meaning insensitivity to pain especially under the influence anæsthetic drugs.

In essence, æsthesia is the ability of any living organism to perceive ~ to have sensations ~ to notice changes, to be aware of pain and pleasure, opportunity and danger, to be sensitive to temperature, touch, sound, smells, visual impressions, flavour, movement etc.

To sense and perceive are fundamental human activities and skills. They enable us to comprehend and make sense of ourselves and the world.

Let’s take a brief walk through the part of the wildwordwoods where our verbionts of sensation and perception grow, and find out what ~ if anything ~ they reveal about their relationship to our anatomy:::

1 – anticipate [Latin ante = before + capere = to take] 🤚🏿
2 – apprehend [Latin ad = to + prehendere = to seize] 🤚🏿
3 – assume [Latin ad = before + sub = under + emere = to take] 🤚🏿
4 – aware [Old English weard = to watch, observe, guard] 𓁹
5 – catch [Latin capere = to take, captare = to seize, hold] 🤚🏿
6 – comprehend [Latin com = together + prehendere = to seize] 🤚🏿
7 – consider [Latin com = together + sidere = of the stars] ✮⋆˙
8 – contemplate [Latin com = together + templum = area for the auguries, ie divination from the flight of birds] 🕊️
9 – define [Latin de = off, from, away + finis = boundary, limit] ⏳
10 – detect [Latin de = off, from, away + tegere = cover] ⛱
11 – determine [Latin de = off, from, away + terminare = end] ⌛
12 – digest [Latin dis = apart + gerere = carry] 🤚🏿
13 – discern [Latin dis = apart + cernere = separate, sift] ✂
14 – discover [Latin dis = apart + cooperire = close, cover] ⛱
15 – expect [Latin ex = out + spectare = look] 𓁹
16 – gather [Old English gadrian = to unite, collect, store] 🤚🏿
17 – get [Old Norse geta = to obtain, reach, be able to, guess right]
18 – grasp [Old English græpsan = to touch, feel, grope] 🤚🏿
19 – fathom [Old English fæðm = length of the outstretched arm] 𓂝
20 – indicate [Latin in = into + digit = finger] ☝
21 – inspect [Latin in = inward, inside + spectare = look] 𓁹
22 – perceive [Latin per = thoroughly + capere = to take] 🤚🏿
23 – presume [Latin præ = before + sub = under + emere = to take] 🤚🏿
24 – reckon [Old German rehhanon = to count, calculate] 🧮
25 – reflect [Latin re = back + flectere = to bend] ꩜
26 – sense [Latin sentire = to feel, become aware through the senses] ♥
27 – speculate [Latin specere = to look] 𓁹
28 – suspect [Latin sub = up to, under + specere = to look] 𓁹
29 – suppose [Latin sub = up to, under + ponere = to place] 🤚🏿
30 – understand [Latin inter = between + stare = be present, to hold a place] 👣

This (incomplete) list of æsthetic verbionts ~ in the original sense of aisthetikos ~ gives an indication of how we know what we know ~ how humans acquire information.

Here is the verdict::
Of the thirty verbionts listed above, two involve physical and/or mental ability (17, 24).
Five refer to the use of the eyes. (4, 15, 21, 27, 28) 𓁹
Six rely on external phenomena (7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14).
Six require external or internal movement, activity or position (13, 19, 20, 25, 26, 30).
And eleven relate to the hands (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 12, 16, 18, 22, 23, 29) 🤚🏿

In other words, purely from the perspective of language, it looks like our hands are far more involved in our cognitive processes than head and brains.

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Hands

photo credit © Shane Rounce on Unsplash

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Nerve Hubs and Nerve Endings

The nervous system is not just a general network of neurons which supply the entire body with vital sensory and motor nerves (sensory for the ability to notice sensations and motor for the ability to control movement). It also forms several so-called neural plexuses.

Plexus [from Latin plectere = to braid] means network.

Sorry, the English language has many confusing linguistic entanglements. Plexus is one of them. If the nervous system is a network of neurons, what’s the big deal about those plexuses?
A neural plexus is a denser gathering of neurons in certain parts of the body. A plexus is basically a cluster, a crowd, a gang of neurons within the greater network. You could also call it a hub.

A hub of nerves in a certain body part essentially means intense processing of sensory information.

Between 1856 and 1857 the English physician, surgeon and artist Henry Vandyke Carter produced 363 anatomical drawings, drawn on boxwood blocks, ready for the wood engraver. Carter’s drawings would later become the illustrations of Gray’s Anatomy, first published in 1858 and in its 42nd edition in 2020.

Carter’s drawings of the nervous system show a series of plexuses (nerve-hubs) all over the body. These supply the organism with sensory information and stimuli for vital activities:::

the cerebral plexus in the skull
the cœliac plexus (= solar plexus) in the belly
the brachial plexus in the armpit
the cardiac plexus in the heart area
the sacral plexus at the bottom of the pelvis
and many others as shown in the drawing below by Henry Vandyke Carter

The current scientific proposition is that the brain is a complex network of neurons, which controls and coordinates body functions. The remaining nerve-hubs all participate in the sensory functions of the nervous system. Those hubs ~ plexuses ~ rely heavily nerve-endings. That’s where the organism literally picks up sensory information.

That the tips of our fingers are particularly sensitive because of a high density of nerve endings has been well known for ages. Despite their extraordinary sensitivity and capacity for developing fine motor skills, fingers did not have the status of ‘vital organs’ ~ until recently…

“The nerve endings in your fingertips can perform complex neural computations that were thought to be carried out by the brain,” says neurobiologist and science writer Mo Costandi, quoting new findings.

Increasingly sophisticated technological tools enable researchers to make new discoveries about the relationship between mind and body faster than the habitual human belief system can register. In Costandi‘s article, the cerebral plexus is still considered the ‘headquarters’ of information processing.

The brain allegedly ‘outsources’ certain sensory tasks to other parts of the nervous system. This type of interpretation is clinging to the hierarchical structures invented and propped up by the Anthropocenic mindset.

In the dawning light of the Symbiocene this perception is beginning to soften and shift. It’s not only because technology enables us to discover new details of our anatomy. More powerful shifts happen when we open our mental receptors and acknowledge the existence of anatomical parts which have been overlooked earlier. The parts in question here are the so-called fascia.

Fascia [from Latin fascia = band ribbon] refers to the collagenous tissue which covers all organs, muscles and other body parts, including the nerves

“You can think of fascia as the largest sensory organ in your body as it houses 250 million nerve endings,”  Dr. Arielle Schwartz (psychologist and yoga teacher) writes on her blog.

Trauma therapists, pain specialists, and bodyworkers are popularising the latest findings of neuroscientific-research about the connection between fascia and the vagus nerve which plays an important role in communicating changes in the fascia to the brain.

“You can think of the vagus nerve as a bi-directional information highway between brain and body that helps regulate your autonomic nervous system.” Schwartz explains further.

The implications are far reaching ~ further than our current horizon. What these epiphanies in neurobiology allow us to predict with some confidence, is that any mental activity is a symbiogenetic effort. It’s what holistic practitioners have understood since Hippocrates.

Mind and body are one organism. Cognition, intelligence, memory, emotions, reasoning, learning and so forth don’t happen exclusively in the brain, or any of the other suspects. The mind has its sensors everywhere and anywhere in the body. The human experience is a communal project driven by collaboration and synergy.

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More about those fascinating fascia in next week’s wordcast.