The Nth Sense

Since times immemorial, we the humans have considered ourselves to be the supreme of all life forms. If we look at the 'Ladder of Life', an artistic representation by the great philosopher Aristotle, then above humans, come only angels. Hence, in the realm of the natural, humans hold the thrown. Shakespeare, in Hamlet, quotes,

"What a piece of work is a man,

How noble in reason, how infinite

In faculties, in form and moving how express

And admirable, in action how like an angel,

In apprehension how like a god!

The beauty of the world,

The paragon of animals... "

And why should not we consider ourselves to be the 'paragon' of all life forms or the ruler of this planet? Since the day in human history, we have learnt to us our thumb, verbally communicate through language, walk erect (bipedallism), live together in a society, we have been changing the face of our planet. We have not only been adopting but also altering our surroundings as per our needs. If some unknown alien species, on some other planet, would have been tracking the changes taking place on our Earth then they would have certainly noticed the rapid makeover on it in the last thousand years (last two hundred years to be precise) as it has not undergone since the advent of life on it. A million salutes to our species and its extraordinary cognitive abilities- of vision (the eyes), of audition (the ears), of touch (the skin), of taste (the tongue) and of smell (the nose) all coordinated by a lump of jelly- the brain. At times, although not frequently, a very few of us report to have undergone bizarre experiences like de-ja-vus, intuitions, insights into the future- not only unexplainable but very hard to believe in as well. People who report to have this 'sixth sense' are generally considered to be fraud by most of us and the general public. It's mainly because; we ourselves have never felt the power of this sixth sense and neither the crowd around us which we can follow. Hence, in the fashion of following fashions and in our pride of being the supreme intellect, we negate everything which does not follow the general distribution or is an outlier or which is beyond the comprehensive abilities of our brain. However, giving a closer look at our brain, we realize that it's nothing but a machine (this is my personal opinion and has nothing to do with the Institute of which I am a part of) and this machine, like all others, has its own limitations. As example, let us consider the sense of vision. Suppose you are looking at a uniform iron bar placed in front of you. How does the brain determine its orientation in 3D space- whether it's placed horizontally or vertically or at some angle? In the circuitry for vision, there are neurons which are selective for specific orientation in the sense that they would fire only when the object is at a specific orientation but not other and other neurons, which would fire for another specific orientation, and so on. Suppose, there exists an orientation of the bar for which there are no specifically selective neurons. What would happen in that case? Well, we will perceive a false image of the bar which is different from its real orientation. Such is the case with magic tricks based on optical illusions.

Shakespeare, further quotes:

"... -and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Man delights not me-

Nor woman neither..."

A simple analogy to the above are all other forms of life around us whose cognitive abilities differ from ours- bats with the ability to detect supersonic waves, dogs with night vision, sharks with extremely sensitive nose, etc. Hence, a natural question which comes to the mind is, 'What are the factors on which these abilities depend on?' Basically two things:

1. A receiver which can receive such a stimulus, convert it into a signal which could be transmitted further and

2. A computational network which can decode this signal (the network of neurons in the brain).

Suppose, in the due course of evolution, we develop receptors for X-ray in our retina and a neural circuitry in the brain to receive it, that day our visual capacity will be enhanced. And similarly, one day, a new biological system which can perceive those signals which travel in the dimension of time, then that day, we all would be oracles and de-ja-vus and insights into the past and the future would be a day to day experience. But till then, 'just imagine'!

"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."

(Albert Einstein)

Tanveer Verma,

National Brain Research Centre- Gurgaon

tanveer@nbrc.ac.in