When all you have is a fusiform gyrus, everything looks like a face

[dreamer_easy]

Reading the fascinating A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness by V.S. Ramachandran, with its accounts of strange neurological conditions, and finding various SFnal connections.

One of the reasons Jack realises Adam is a fake is that he has no emotional reaction to his supposed teammate, even though he remembers him. "When I think of my team, I see you there, but I don't feel anything for you. No pride. No warmth." This dissonance has its real-world parallel in Capgras syndrome, in which people become convinced a loved one has been replaced by an identical impostor. Damage to the brain has cut the connection between the visual centres and the amgydala, the emotional centre of the brain; so the patient recognises (say) their mother, but feels nothing for her, coming to the conclusion that she must be someone else. (Ramachandran's patient had no trouble accepting his mother as the real deal when talking to her by phone - the connection between the auditory centre and the amygdala was intact.

In Ringworld, one of Larry Niven's cowardly aliens, the Puppeteers, explains why his species have no sense of humour: "Humor is associated with an interrupted defense mechanism... no sapient being ever interrupts a defense mechanism." Until now, I had no idea what this meant, but Ramachandran argues for exactly this theory when describing a patient who responded to pain with uncontrollable laughter. It can't just be the a-ha effect, he points out, or every great scientific discovery "would be greeted with hilarity". Instead, "laughter is nature's way of signalling 'that it's a false alarm'": someone slipping on a banana peel is funny if they're not actually hurt. (This would explain my outbursts of hysterical relieved laughter during Countrycide and also the Voyager episode The Thaw). Ramachandran suggests his patient's brain also had a cut connection: "one part of the brain signals a potential danger but the very next instant another part... does not receive a confirmatory signal, thereby leading to the conclusion 'it's a false alarm'". For Puppeteers, I guess, there are no false alarms.

(Lots of stuff on synaesthesia, which I'll scribble about in door_of_time.)

Comments

[dameruth.livejournal.com]

Random rec -- if you haven't read Peter Watts' Blindsight (http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm), I think you'd enjoy it. Good stuff, definitely deserved that Hugo nomination . . . (yeah, I know, adding another book to a "to read" pile can be a cruel thing -- at least he'd got it up for free on the net!). ;)

[drhoz.livejournal.com]

very interesting - but I still suspect I'll laugh my head off if, say, Dubya trips coming down the stairs of Air Force One and breaks every bone in his face.

[drox.livejournal.com]

This would explain my outbursts of hysterical relieved laughter during Countrycide...

Or maybe you just laughed because it was silly. That's why I laughed.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the other version of the scene? Where Jack shoots everyone in the knees and then says, "What is wrong with you people?" And you want them to reply, "You shot us in the knees, that's what!"