Ever read any of Oliver Sack's books? He's the neurologist/author whose work include the highly engaging books The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Awakenings, and An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales.
Anyway, an article I read today in the New York Times got me thinking about him and others like him who write about fascinating aspects of our brains. Another thing I started mulling over was a conversation I had years ago with Ben (a computational neuroscientist and former boyfriend) about what differentiated man from other animals. When I asked Ben this question he told me that every time scientists try to define that difference, new research comes along that refutes existing hypothesises, blurring the line that separates us from other mammals. Obviously we're different, right? In what way are humans different? At first we thought it was because we have emotions. Then they discovered that other animals have emotions too. We thought it was because we use tools - but some animals do too (there's a type of monkey that uses sticks to pull ants out of anthills) - language? Nope. Speaking of ants, they build cities too.
Frankly I don't know what separates us (apart from our stunning good looks) and I do wonder if by setting ourselves apart it sanctions us to feel entitled to do what we will with the planet. If we categorized ourselves as having more in common with animals, recognizing the validity of their needs and wants, would we be so quick to dismiss our effect on our environment? Probably.
Anyway, getting back to the New York Times article, it's subject was the insula, a portion of the brain that seems to serve as a link between the body and mind. It serves in part to structure our emotional landscape and helps to explain how the brain reads the sense receptors of the internal organs and skin and then processes them, creating subjective responses that motivate us to react to our environment. And the insula offers an enticing clue to qualify the distinction between humans and other mammals, who also have an insula and emotions but are not thought to have subjective feelings in the same way humans do. The article talks about two particularities that distinguish the human insula. So this article offers another context for understanding what it means to be human.
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