Images of
patterns (in the broadest sense of the word, including musical tunes, memories
of smells and subterranean visual images) that are the currency of the human
mind. But our unique abilities for visual gymnastics come at a high cost
because they are a brain-power hungry activity. It has been calculated that over
50% of our brain's capacity is used for visual tasks, and although it may seem
our brains are a relatively small part of our body weight (just 2%) they consume
20% of our daily energy requirements. Our expanded heads make
childbirth dangerous, our babies arrive in the world more helpless than other
animals and our children take decades to grow into adults.
(photo; Scientific American Website)
Evolution would not have invested such a high amount of
resources into big brains that take decades to develop if there was not a very
big payback for our species. One payback may be this ability to visualise how
objects change with time, because it gives us the knowledge to predict what will
happen in our world.
Memories of the Future is at the root
of these predictive faculties which gives us foresight and choice to adapt our
behaviour to sudden environmental change. It contributes to making us the most
cunning species on the planet; able to plan and make choices, use objects to
make tools, and visualise strategies to overcome problems and outwit other
species that
we want to
escape from or exploit for food.
Memories of the
Future has another unexpected virtue, it changes the way we see objects in the
world around us. To other animals objects must seem static in time, but for us
it is quite different because when we see things, even useless things, we see
the potential they hold. For instance when a dog looks at a strawberry flower
it thinks "This is not food, it is not dangerous, it is not a warm place to
sleep - it is useless and to be ignored" but we see the flower's potential
to bring us food. Dogs ignore the first green shoots that emerge through the
snow, they may are useless inedible things to us too, but they are symbolic of
the changing seasons and the coming Spring which will bring warmer weather and
new sources of food.
So when we see the plants responding to the
weather like this, we are aware that around us are other living entities that
share our wish to see the warmer weather. They seem to know the winter is over
before we do, as if they are the intelligent. So when we walk hand in hand
through the woods in Spring we are in contemplation of the changing of the
seasons, and we are in awe of the things around us which also seem to also be
contemplating Spring, we sense that they contain spirit like we do. Only our
species has this Godly vision of the world to which we belong, perhaps that is
why only our species worships God.
Another
interesting thought is that memories of the future gave us a reason to think
with symbols, which is the precursor to language. Did memories of the future
make us into symbol thinking animals that had the potential to go on to invent
language? Just a thought, I have never seen this idea suggested in
books!
Time Lines
Memories of the future introduced a new element into
our conscious thought, and a new mental ability that led to a new faculty of
mind that is not available to other species. This faculty might have been
the golden key that unlocked a treasure chest of new aptitudes that are the
hallmark of humanity; things like our "Ego and our Heightened sense of
Self", "Reason, Science and Deductive Thought",
"Religion and Beliefs", "Language with Grammar and
Syntax", "Culture, Imitation and Memes", "A
Sense of Good and Evil", "A Guilty Conscience" and
"Art and Creativity". The list can be endlessly extended and
subdivided, it could also include "Empathy and Compassion",
"Free Will", "Social Organisation" and
"Toolmaking". The golden faculty I am writing of is the mental
time-lines that memories of the future enables us to construct inside our
heads. Let me demonstrate what a mental time line is and why it is so special:
A seedling goes through a succession of stages before
fruiting. These successive stages are put in order on a timeline which has been
artificially constructed in our heads. To join up our thoughts onto a single
thread of time the mind had to adapt old cloth to serve new purposes; it taken
our ability to visualise space to create a completely new sort of visualisation;
visualization of time as a line in space. The way we talk about time is
saturated with spatial metaphors; the very word "line" is a spatial metaphor,
and we talk of time stretching out before us, things happening before and after
each other, and taking a short or long time. If you observe the timelines you
create in your head you will find you imagine the transformations happening in
virtual space created in your head;
;
Memories are
not always put on the time line in the
same order that we experienced or learnt about them, the order is often
worked out in
working
memory before being placed in the appropriate position on the virtual time
line in your head. It is very easy to demonstrate this happening:
Take the sentence "Today John drove to meet Emily
who had already gone to London by train to help her parents move into the flat
that they had bought in the previous Spring"
The order in which your mind was told the information:
1. (First we are told) John drove to
meet Emily
2. (Second we are told) Emily ...had already gone by
train to London.
3. (third we are told) parents and moving into the
new flat (which we presume is in London).
4. (Forth we are told) her Emily's parents
had bought a flat in the previous Spring
Our mind has to re-order the information before putting it
onto a virtual timeline and memorising it. To make a time line we have to use
another sort of memory called "working memory". The term working memory refers
to a brain function that provides temporary storage where information can
be manipulated for complex cognitive tasks such as language comprehension,
learning, and reasoning. The information held in the working memory is very
fragile and quickly forgotten, which happens if you become distracted, like when
someone interrupts you whilst you are trying to remember a telephone number.
(If you want to remember the number for the long term you have to go through a
procedure of rehearsing the information by repeating it to yourself several
times or writing it down. It can then be stored in your memory banks before you
think about something else).
The current model for working memory has three parts; A
phonological loop (dubbed: the inner voice and
ear) which remembers and organisms language, and visuo-spatial
sketchpad (dubbed: The inner eye) that manipulates visual
images, and central executive function that is an
attention-controlling system that combines the two. One way we use the working
memory is to analyse the order in which things happened and place the
information as a timeline on our visuospatial sketchpad . When we are satisfied
that we have worked out the meaning of a long sentence (full of clauses) it is
visualised as a single time line. Only after we have done this can we put the
new information into our long term memory.
Working memory can also retrieve information retained in the
long term memory, and combine it with new information that has just arrived.
For instance last year you may have seen the strawberries, but at that time you
had never seen the plant's white flowers. When you see the white flowers the
following year you can decide that the cycle goes white flowers followed by red
strawberry fruit. (Think of your knowledge of history, where you learn about the
Tudors and Romans before you learn about the Plantaginets, this does not stop
you finding a space on the virtual timeline for the Plantaginets which is
between the Romans and the Tudors)
:
Timelines are one useful format (amongst many) in which the
information is stored.
Now lets return to the sentence about Emily, John and her
parents flat which is no longer in your working memory. If it never got
further than your working memory you will need to read it again to find out what
order things happened. If it is on a timeline in your long term memory, you
will be able to visualise what happened by retrieving the timeline.
1. What happened first? -
Answer: Emily's parents bought a new flat
2. What happened second? -
Answer: Yesterday Emily went up to London
3. What happened third? -
Answer: Emily helped her parents move into the new
flat
4. What happened fourth? - Answer
The day after John drove up to London.
Having visulised the order in which events happened we are
able to commit the timeline into our long term memory. What do you do if you
are asked a few days later what happened? You visualise the time line you
stored in your long term memory. You do not repeat the sentences you originally
heard, instead you look at your virtual timeline and after seeing the order in
which things happened make up a sentence; maybe you would say: "Last
Spring Emily's parents bought a new flat. Emily went to London by
train to help them move their things in and a day later John drove up to join
them." When you began your sentence you would have a fuzzy idea of how
the sentence would end, this is because as you are speaking you are also
consulting the time line which has been retrieved into your working memory
from your long-term memory as you are constructing your sentence.
In my limited reading on the subject I have not come across
discussion on the relatedness of Memories of the Future and
Mental Time lines, but it seems to me that they
co-evolved.
Timelines are an essential element for nearly all the other
human faculties we value. Let me take my conjecture one step further:
Knowledge of One's own
Identity
We have one Timeline in our heads which is more
important than the others, it is the autobiographical record of
our own lives. The record is self knowledge that is collected from memories of
our lives as we remember them, it can also contain memories that we have been
told about. Individuals in our social group will share some of the main
events, but the detail will be personal to the individual.
.
Our autobiographical record will often start with memories of
things we cannot remember. In my case I was born on a farm near Whiteland in
1953, and this information has become deeply embedded on my autobiographical
record. In fact I cannot quite know if some of my earliest memories are really
memories at all or false memories implanted from stories I have been told by my
mother. In my diagram I have included stories about ancestors too, because they
are part of our history and identity. If I were black American I might include
records of the circumstances behind my family traveling from the African
continent to the New World, because this would be an important memory that still
affects how I behave towards the outside world.
Antonio Damasio, whose model of consciousness we will discuss
when we come to look at the structure of the brain, posits that the evolution of
an autobiographical record was the critical event that created a new level of
consciousness in our minds. He has put forward a theory that the creation of
an autobiographical record in the human mind gave us an internal knower of the
self. Previous to this event the conscious mind had almost no conscious sense
of self. All living things have a sense of self, but this sense of self is not
consciously known to them. Humanity has developed a self aware self that
can stand back from our emotional world, and is able to contest and argue
against what our emotional drives are telling us to do. The mind has a new
faculty, reason, which can choose to override the instructions that come
from out emotional drives and gut instincts.
Visualisation of Time gave us a view of how objects in the
world around us have a past and a future, and will change in predictable
ways (what I half jokingly call Godly vision), and it also gave us knowledge of
how we ourselves also change in the world, and how we have a past and a
future. It gave us an opportunity to have knowledge of our place in the
world. Afterwards we were able to control nature and know good and evil. Maybe
visulisation of time caused us to be most arrogant inhabitants in the Garden of
Eden, but we were not cursed.
The unexpected gifts of having higher levels of consciousness
enable us to love on a new level. Amongst the unexpected features of the
autobiographical timeline is our ability to choose to position our thoughts on
any point along our autobiographical record, and we can imagine ourselves back
to being a previous version of self in an earlier time; for instance you might
remember your days at university sitting in the Students Union bar with
friends. When you do this you then think your way back to being that previous
self with half-forgotten friends in that half-forgotten place. Like an actor
you can experience to be that person you were all those years ago, with
a virtual past that does not include all you know now, a virtual present that is
you as a still unmarried single person and a virtual future which does not
yet include knowledge of the partner you met some years later and married. It
is as if our mind can be reconstructed and moved about in time and space.
Knowledge of Others
Theory
of Mind
I mentioned that we have the ability to move our mindset back
in time, and re-imagine how we were experiencing the world when we were
younger. In my example I suggested thinking back to your student days, but this
is only a taster for something much more extraordinary; not only can we move
back and forward on our autobiographical timeline, we can also can move our
mindset on to other autobiographical time lines belonging to other people. Here
is an example of what I mean; suppose you are looking at another person and
imagining what is going on in their minds and how they are feeling, how do you
do that? Well you build up knowledge about what is going on inside their heads,
which could include a picture of
their autobiographical records. Having
managed this you move your mindsets into their heads and imagine how they are
subjectively experiencing the world. For instance we might look at a friend who
is drinking too much after losing a girlfriend, and imagine how we would feel in
his situation. When we do this we are empathising with them. This ability
to work out what others are experiencing is called "
Theory of Mind". It
is called theory of mind because it is exactly that, we build a theory of what
their subjective world looks like from inside their heads, which often starts
with constructing their time line in our heads and living it with them. ToM is
very useful because by understanding the mental outlook of another person we can
predict their behaviour, be more sensitive and build closer social bonds with
them. It also helps us predict, and outmaneuver the strategies of our enemies.
There are people who have poor Theory of Mind abilities which
is called
mindblindness. These
people find it difficult to empathise and integrate socially with other people,
and mindblindness is thought to be a cause (maybe amongst others) of autism and
Aspergers. Mindblindness can be a permanent inability that is rooted in the
structure of the brain. The brutal conditions that Romanian orphanages have
provided clear evidence that the affects of abuse, lack of
affection and isolation during crucial times during early childhood have
irreversible affects on the physical development of the brain, and the
children's ability to relate socially with other people is permanently lost for
life. On the other end of the spectrum
Empathy can also be
greatly enhanced through
imitation and synchronising
your physical behaviour with friends and team mates. This is called mirroring;
smiling when they smile, sitting in the same way they are sitting. It has also
been shown that marching and walking in time with each other makes people bond
mentally, and young couples meet and fall in love with each other by going
dancing.
.
(photo: bodylanguagesuccess.com)
Theory of Mind in Infants
Theory of
Mind is a big subject in psychology and child development. Amongst the
questions asked is do infants have ToM and when does it develop. The conclusion
is that this ability begins to show itself between the ages of three and four,
prior to this age children have very little understanding or appreciation that
there are other minds seeing the world from other points of view. They also seem
to have an underdeveloped sense of self, for instance if you place a blob on the
forehead of a toddler and put them in front of a mirror they do not seem to
recognise that the blob is on their bodies. This test is passed by chimpanzees.
The tests
for ToM are quite complex, and usually involve testing whether the toddler
understands that another person can have different beliefs from themselves. A
simple example is the closed candy box which is full of pencils; when the child
is asked to guess what is in the box they reply "candy", then they are shown
that inside there is not candy, just pencils which they had not expected. Then
the box is closed and if they are asked again; what do you think is in the box
they will reply "pencils". At this point a third person enters the room and the
child is asked what she thinks the third person thinks is in the candy box? A
child under the age of four will nearly always say "pencils", but the toddler
who is older will say "candy". The older child has grasped that the third
person has their own beliefs which can include mistaken
beliefs.
ToM is a
very big asset in social groups because it allows members
to outwit other members of the group by leading them into making false
assumptions and having mistaken beliefs. Interestingly very small children are
very bad liars; they tell lies that are just obviously not going to deci eve,
like games of peek a boo where the child thinks if she cannot see you, you
cannot see her. After the age of four children will invent false stories to
evade punishment, very often blaming others for what they have done wrong. ToM
also helps adults predict the actions of others, whether it is being done in the
spirit of co-operation or competition.
Do Chimps have Theory of
Mind?
There are all sorts of studies that purport to show that
chimps have Theory of mind. The work of Byrn and Whitten in 1988 who observed
the behaviour of six chimps was amongst the earliest work to demonstrate clear
evidence of theory of mind in other animals. Amongst the group was a dominant
male called Rock and a timid female called Belle. The researcher had a routine
of taking the chimps out of their enclosure and burying food, whilst they did
this only Belle could see where the food was being hidden, if Rock was not
present Belle would lead all the other chimps to the food and they would all
share the goodies, but if Rock was there he would bite and bully Belle taking
all her food. So Belle began to devise strategies to deci eve Rock into
thinking she did not know where food was hidden.
At first she would go to where the food was buried and sit on
the spot until Rock was out of sight, then she would dig up the food. But Rock
got wind of this and as soon as Belle sat down Rock would run up and push her
off the food and eat it without sharing it with Belle. Belle then would go and
sit a little distance from where the food was hidden, but soon Rock worked that
out too and would dig all around where she sat. So Belle began to sit even
further away and wait for Rock to look in the other direction, and then she
would get the food. Rock worked that out too and began to pretend to look away
or wander off, and then bounce back. Belle then began to lead the group to a
completely wrong place and Rock would start digging, then she would amble off
to where the food really was hidden
The speed with which the two chimps worked out each other's
strategies convinced the observers that there was an intellectual arms race of
bluff and counter bluff, and theory of mind was involved.
.
Kanzi and Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
More recently the extremely intelligent behaviour of a Bonobo
Chimp called
Kanzi which has been
studied and written up by
Dr Sue
Savage-Rumbaugh who has been nominated as one of the 100 most influential
people in the world for he work with Kanzi. But she is not without
controversies of her own. She claims this chimp has learnt to make flint tools,
use sign language and has theory of mind.
Best
wishes
Julian
