How Many Brains?

I saw something in my Facebook feed today about the conscious and the subconscious: about how our conscious mind makes a decision and then our subconscious works on the details of how to arrive. I like hearing about all these discussions of the mind(s) and it got me to thinking: how many minds do we actually have? I read something else last week that was talking about the importance of the gut in our health, and it was suggesting that there are cells that exhibit memory in that region. I think they were calling the gut the ‘little brain’.

I find it interesting, this segmental way of thinking, suggesting that we have all of these tiny sub-compartments within us, competing to get their points across, in addition to working along in the harmony of homeostasis with all of the other fragments.

Quite a long while ago Renee Decartes said, “I think, therefore I am” and from then on we decided that the mind was primary and that there was at least one separation- that of the brain and the body.

But what unifies it all?

Of course my professional bias begs me to say that the brain and the nerve system controls it all, organising and orchestrating the intricate dance of our cells.

And although my intellectual mind (see- another mind) agrees, and as I write, is searching around my corpuscles for more truths to back up this statement, what if this is not the case?

What if, there are no separate minds/parts/segments? What if, somehow, every cell is interconnected to all of the other cells, communicating freely, sharing information, memories and desires with all of the other cells, as if as one? A complete whole. Which would make us beings without boundaries within.

When Coco gets her transfusions, she undergoes an almost immediate change. Well before even a quarter of the new blood is distilled into her veins, she becomes a little of something (someone?) else. I understand that some of the shift will be the haemoglobin, and the relief and the increase in energy, but there is something more. And the result is different with each bag of blood.

Now blood cells do not contain DNA, the part of the cells that science tells us is what makes us “us”. So how does she do this? How does a two year old child, with a child’s vocabulary and understanding of jokes, start reeling of a routine of ‘knock-knock’ jokes? How does her personality morph, just for a while? I know what science will say, and I agree with some of it.

But some of it is still a mystery.

And a thrilling mystery at that.

I think I might like it that way.

See what happens when I wake up at 5am to write? Hmmm…

…From The Ashers