Brain Functional Architecture and Human Understanding

*Yan M. Yufik*

**"Reagan.** *What need one?* **King Lear***. O, reason not the need: our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous: Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life's as cheap as beast's…" William Shakespeare. King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4*

### **Abstract**

The opening line in Aristotle's *Metaphysics* asserts that "humans desire to understand", establishing understanding as the defining characteristic of the human mind and human species. What is understanding and what role does it play in cognition, what advantages does it confer, what brain mechanisms are involved? The Webster's Dictionary defines understanding as "apprehending general relations in a multitude of particulars." A proposal discussed in this chapter defines understanding as a form of active inference in self-adaptive systems seeking to expand their inference domains while minimizing metabolic costs incurred in the expansions. Under the same proposal, understanding is viewed as an advanced adaptive mechanism involving self-directed construction of mental models establishing relations between domain entities. Understanding complements learning and serves to overcome the inertia of learned behavior when conditions are unfamiliar or deviate from those experienced in the past. While learning is common across all animals, understanding is unique to the human species. This chapter will unpack these notions, focusing on different facets of understanding. The proposal formulates hypotheses regarding the underlying neuronal mechanisms, attempting to assess their plausibility and reconcile them with the recent ideas and findings concerning brain functional architecture.

**Keywords:** neuronal mechanisms, consciousness, understanding, brain function, functional architecture, neuronal correlations of understanding

### **1. Introduction**

The concept of 'mental models', i.e. memory constructs acting as "small-scale models of reality" intervening between stimuli and responses was introduced in [1], and subsequently elaborated by multiple authors applying the concept in the context of various disciplines [2–6]. More general, domain-invariant theories conceptualize models as inferential frameworks enabling deductive and other forms of reasoning [7, 8], in particular, reasoning by analogy [9].

The theory of understanding discussed in this chapter (the VAN theory formulated in [10–12]) centers on the notions of self-adaptive processes in virtual associative networks (VAN) and defines understanding as a human-specific form of active inference subsumed under the principles of active inference and variational free energy minimization advanced in [13, 14]. The theory contends that curbing metabolic costs and regulating the dynamics of energy processes in the brain have been critical factors in the evolution of intelligence, culminating in the emergence of mental modeling mechanisms in humans that made possible explosive growth in the variety of activities a person can engage in without exploding either the number of neurons and/or the metabolic costs of neuronal processes necessary for organizing those activities. According to the theory, mental models are simultaneous memory structures imposing tight constraints on their constituent components and thus sharply reducing the number of degrees of freedom available to them. Reduction in the number of degrees of freedom minimizes the amount of processing in performing cognitive tasks, yielding two interrelated benefits: curbing energy demands and giving rise to abilities that define human intelligence and are inherent in the understanding capacity, i.e. prediction, explanation, and planning.

These ideas are explored in the present chapter, heeding the advice attributed to Einstein and suggesting that, when pondering a problem, the bulk of the effort needs to be spent on formulating the problem (as clearly as possible). Due to a confluence of circumstances, cognitive science has been downplaying the role of understanding in cognitive performance. The main thrust in this chapter is to examine and elevate that role. The chapter is organized in fours parts. Section 2 reviews challenges to understanding posed by different tasks, Section 3 starts with an excursion into evolutionary history, focusing on differences in cognitive performance making human intelligence discontinuous with that of the other species, and Section 4 outlines a theory of understanding, building on the notions introduced in the preceding parts. Section 5 presents a discussion and brief concluding remarks.

## **2. Anatomy of understanding**

Understanding involves grasping relations between entities, which boils down to fitting representations of these entities into simultaneous memory structures (mental models) that sharply reduce the number of degrees of freedom available to them. Illustrating how these processes operate in the understanding of literary works will help clarifying the ideas.

#### **2.1 Understanding Shakespeare**

The corpus of literary work by William Shakespeare includes 37 plays and over 150 sonnets and poems. It has been estimated that a legion of monkeys with as many members as there are protons in the observable universe, each monkey having a typewriter and hitting randomly at the keys, would need the amount of time more than three hundred and sixty thousand orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe in order to have a negligibly small chance (1 in 10500) of having typed a single play (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite\_monkey\_theorem).

The adult human brain comprises 86 billion neurons and 85 billion non-neuronal cells [15] which are vanishingly small numbers compared to the size of the monkey legion. How is it possible that a vanishingly small number of cells in Shakespeare's brain managed to produce his entire literary output within a vanishingly small time period (compared to the age of the universe)? The monkey legion is utterly disorganized while the activity of brain cells is precisely orchestrated, what are the

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principles and mechanisms of such orchestration responsible for the staggering difference in the output? Taking a closer look at the construction of Shakespeare's texts

Shakespeare's complete works comprise 884,647 words arranged in 118, 406 lines. Applying statistical measures, one can find out, for example, that predictability of letters (entropy per letter) in Shakespeare's texts depends strongly on the letter's position in the word, declining from roughly 3.8 bits in the first letter to 2 bits in the second letter and reaching a plateau of 0.7 bits after the fifth letter. These statistical characteristics are not particularly informative since they do not change much when the words are randomly scrambled, nor there is much difference between Shakespeare's text and a collection of mixed English texts from newspapers [16]. More sophisticated methods of text analysis apply measures of information-based energy and (information-based) temperature to detect variations in the text organization (words with different occurrence frequencies are placed at different energy levels presumed to obey Boltzmann distribution, and the relative temperature of a selected piece of text is computed as the ratio of energy measures in that piece and in the entire corpus). When applied to the collection of Shakespeare's plays, the method revealed that, among the four genres (histories, comedies, tragedies and romances), tragedies have the highest relative temperature (histories have the lowest) and *The* 

might offer some clues about the organization of brain processes.

*Tragedy of Macbeth* scores the highest among the tragedies [17]. How so?

Study in [17] interprets relative temperature as a characteristic of the author's ability to choose words and construct texts in a manner that is both succinct and gives the fullest possible expression to the underlying thoughts (manifesting most prominently in *Macbeth)*. Presumably, exercising this ability in the production of literary works (e.g., writing plays) is aimed at maximizing understandability, that is, affording readers the best means for understanding the author's thoughts and intentions. Understandability can serve as a decisive criteria in assessing differences between Shakespeare's texts and monkeys' output: the overwhelming bulk of monkeys' production is gibberish while Shakespeare's works are understandable

Per Webster's definition, text understandability depends on the extent to which the selection and composition of words are conducive to a) expressing relations considered by the author and b) constructing relations in the reader's mind isomorphic to those entertained by the author. What is unique about *Macbeth* that could both make the play particularly understandable and also account for the results of

The last two lines present the entirety of Macbeth's reference to the queen in his response to the tragic news; made on the eve of the decisive battle, they convey, in the most succinct and powerful manner, the feeling of despair and a foreboding of the forthcoming military defeat. By wishing to shift the sad news to the "hereafter", Macbeth assigns it a level of significance no lesser than that of the expected military rout and his own likely demise, thus conveying the feeling of a total catastrophe without making any verbose statements to that effect. The following observation concerns a feature of understanding capacity that is presumed to manifest prominently in the cited text, and will play a pivotal role in the theory of understanding outlined in the subsequent sections. Observe that, when constructing the plot, Shakespeare was free to invoke the queens' departure at any point, including allowing her to outlive her husband. The exact timing, neither a day earlier nor at

statistical analysis? Consider three lines at the apex of the play (scene 23):

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95594*

and profoundly meaningful.

**Seyton.** *The queen, my lord, is dead.* **Macbeth.** *She should have died hereafter, There would have been time for such a word…*

#### *Brain Functional Architecture and Human Understanding DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95594*

*Connectivity and Functional Specialization in the Brain*

**2. Anatomy of understanding**

works will help clarifying the ideas.

**2.1 Understanding Shakespeare**

The theory of understanding discussed in this chapter (the VAN theory formulated in [10–12]) centers on the notions of self-adaptive processes in virtual associative networks (VAN) and defines understanding as a human-specific form of active inference subsumed under the principles of active inference and variational free energy minimization advanced in [13, 14]. The theory contends that curbing metabolic costs and regulating the dynamics of energy processes in the brain have been critical factors in the evolution of intelligence, culminating in the emergence of mental modeling mechanisms in humans that made possible explosive growth in the variety of activities a person can engage in without exploding either the number of neurons and/or the metabolic costs of neuronal processes necessary for organizing those activities. According to the theory, mental models are simultaneous memory structures imposing tight constraints on their constituent components and thus sharply reducing the number of degrees of freedom available to them. Reduction in the number of degrees of freedom minimizes the amount of processing in performing cognitive tasks, yielding two interrelated benefits: curbing energy demands and giving rise to abilities that define human intelligence and are inherent in the understanding capacity, i.e. prediction, explanation, and planning. These ideas are explored in the present chapter, heeding the advice attributed to Einstein and suggesting that, when pondering a problem, the bulk of the effort needs to be spent on formulating the problem (as clearly as possible). Due to a confluence of circumstances, cognitive science has been downplaying the role of understanding in cognitive performance. The main thrust in this chapter is to examine and elevate that role. The chapter is organized in fours parts. Section 2 reviews challenges to understanding posed by different tasks, Section 3 starts with an excursion into evolutionary history, focusing on differences in cognitive performance making human intelligence discontinuous with that of the other species, and Section 4 outlines a theory of understanding, building on the notions introduced in the preceding parts. Section 5 presents a discussion and brief concluding remarks.

Understanding involves grasping relations between entities, which boils down to fitting representations of these entities into simultaneous memory structures (mental models) that sharply reduce the number of degrees of freedom available to them. Illustrating how these processes operate in the understanding of literary

The corpus of literary work by William Shakespeare includes 37 plays and over 150 sonnets and poems. It has been estimated that a legion of monkeys with as many members as there are protons in the observable universe, each monkey having a typewriter and hitting randomly at the keys, would need the amount of time more than three hundred and sixty thousand orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe in order to have a negligibly small chance (1 in 10500) of having typed a

The adult human brain comprises 86 billion neurons and 85 billion non-neuronal cells [15] which are vanishingly small numbers compared to the size of the monkey legion. How is it possible that a vanishingly small number of cells in Shakespeare's brain managed to produce his entire literary output within a vanishingly small time period (compared to the age of the universe)? The monkey legion is utterly disorganized while the activity of brain cells is precisely orchestrated, what are the

single play (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite\_monkey\_theorem).

**72**

principles and mechanisms of such orchestration responsible for the staggering difference in the output? Taking a closer look at the construction of Shakespeare's texts might offer some clues about the organization of brain processes.

Shakespeare's complete works comprise 884,647 words arranged in 118, 406 lines. Applying statistical measures, one can find out, for example, that predictability of letters (entropy per letter) in Shakespeare's texts depends strongly on the letter's position in the word, declining from roughly 3.8 bits in the first letter to 2 bits in the second letter and reaching a plateau of 0.7 bits after the fifth letter. These statistical characteristics are not particularly informative since they do not change much when the words are randomly scrambled, nor there is much difference between Shakespeare's text and a collection of mixed English texts from newspapers [16]. More sophisticated methods of text analysis apply measures of information-based energy and (information-based) temperature to detect variations in the text organization (words with different occurrence frequencies are placed at different energy levels presumed to obey Boltzmann distribution, and the relative temperature of a selected piece of text is computed as the ratio of energy measures in that piece and in the entire corpus). When applied to the collection of Shakespeare's plays, the method revealed that, among the four genres (histories, comedies, tragedies and romances), tragedies have the highest relative temperature (histories have the lowest) and *The Tragedy of Macbeth* scores the highest among the tragedies [17]. How so?

Study in [17] interprets relative temperature as a characteristic of the author's ability to choose words and construct texts in a manner that is both succinct and gives the fullest possible expression to the underlying thoughts (manifesting most prominently in *Macbeth)*. Presumably, exercising this ability in the production of literary works (e.g., writing plays) is aimed at maximizing understandability, that is, affording readers the best means for understanding the author's thoughts and intentions. Understandability can serve as a decisive criteria in assessing differences between Shakespeare's texts and monkeys' output: the overwhelming bulk of monkeys' production is gibberish while Shakespeare's works are understandable and profoundly meaningful.

Per Webster's definition, text understandability depends on the extent to which the selection and composition of words are conducive to a) expressing relations considered by the author and b) constructing relations in the reader's mind isomorphic to those entertained by the author. What is unique about *Macbeth* that could both make the play particularly understandable and also account for the results of statistical analysis? Consider three lines at the apex of the play (scene 23):

**Seyton.** *The queen, my lord, is dead.* **Macbeth.** *She should have died hereafter, There would have been time for such a word…*

The last two lines present the entirety of Macbeth's reference to the queen in his response to the tragic news; made on the eve of the decisive battle, they convey, in the most succinct and powerful manner, the feeling of despair and a foreboding of the forthcoming military defeat. By wishing to shift the sad news to the "hereafter", Macbeth assigns it a level of significance no lesser than that of the expected military rout and his own likely demise, thus conveying the feeling of a total catastrophe without making any verbose statements to that effect. The following observation concerns a feature of understanding capacity that is presumed to manifest prominently in the cited text, and will play a pivotal role in the theory of understanding outlined in the subsequent sections. Observe that, when constructing the plot, Shakespeare was free to invoke the queens' departure at any point, including allowing her to outlive her husband. The exact timing, neither a day earlier nor at

any time "hereafter", must have been decided from the start precisely to motivate the striking expression of despair and the subsequent monolog which expanded the meaning of the play from a chronicle of particular (imaginary) events to a philosophical generalization concerning the inescapable drama of the human condition. The monolog starts with the two lines above and concludes with some of the most quoted passages in Shakespeare's literary legacy.

**"***Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."*

The *Tragedy of Macbeth* involves 31 personages, including witches and apparitions, acting in small groupings in 25 consecutive scenes, as shown in **Figure 1**. The sparse matrix in **Figure 1** reveals the overall organization of the play emanating from the organization of the author's mental model that, presumably, formed at the conception of the play and controlled its unfolding.

To underscore, **Figure 1** connotes that, in the mental model, interactions between personages are neither serial nor parallel but simultaneous (or "coinstantaneously co-ordinated", as termed by Jean Piaget in [18]). For example, in scene 3, witches prophesize to Macbeth which results in changing the state of his mind; in scene 7, Macbeth influenced by the prophecy kills Duncan, which was made possible by Duncan's arrival in Macbeth's castle in scene 6, etc. Macbeth's monolog expresses Shakespeare's pessimistic worldview that is echoed in his other plays, for example:

**Prospero***. "…Yea, all which is inherit, shall dissolve, And like this unsubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind, we are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep." The Tempest, Act 4, scene 1*

Arguably, the corpus of Shakespeare's work, i.e. all 884,647 words in 118, 406 lines, is a congruent expression of a worldview rendering all human affairs, excepting those serving the basic survival needs, both superfluous (see the epigraph to this chapter) and devoid of significance. It appears that exceptionally tight action coordination in the plot of *Macbeth* combined with succinct expressions of the


#### **Figure 1.**

Macbeth *plot comprises tightly coordinated interactions among numerous personages and unfolds in consecutive scenes each involving a subset of personages.*

**75**

**Figure 2.**

*Brain Functional Architecture and Human Understanding*

author's worldview consistent with other such expressions throughout the corpus

To summarize what has been suggested up to this point: "apprehending general relations in a multitude of particulars" (per the definition in Webster's Dictionary) takes the form of constructing simultaneous memory structures where entities and their behavior are tightly coordinated. "Relations" are different forms of behavior coordination, i.e., a particular manner in which changes in one entity entail changes in other entities. When entities admit multiple states and a variety of state transitions, relations determine particular mappings between state transition sequences

Models can form hierarchies where relations in the upper-level models (general

Two elderly gentlemen, A and B, are waiting together for a train when a present-

Note that the model was a) composed on the spot to account for a peculiar set of circumstances (as opposed to being retrieved by matching or forged by filling slots in some pre-fabricated template), b) included a chain of tightly coordinated components connecting current conditions to their likely remote consequences (the prediction) and c) enabled using predictions to form a response deviating sharply from the habitual pattern (i.e., rude response to a polite question). More precisely, the model formed by A is a composition of globally coordinated and tightly constrained activities (e.g., C could choose any spot on the platform but was pinned down to the vicinity of A and B, he could board any train and get off anywhere but was constrained to follow A and B, daughter D could be doing anything anywhere but was constrained to appear at the railway station at the time of train's arrival, etc.). The model instantiates a general relation (between income and matrimonial success) held by A, enabling him to predict events in the distant future (D will be unhappy) based on the current cue (C has no watch), and then to use this prediction to inform

the immediate response and to explain the prediction and the response to B.

*Relations establish coordinations between state trajectories. Models are simultaneous structures coordinating deployment of relations and self-initiated state changes (e.g., deploying relation "Macbeth* kills *Duncan" is* 

*preceded by Duncan's decision to put himself in the harm's way, by visiting Macbeth's castle).*

able looking young man (C) approaches A, politely asking for the time. After a short glance at C, A curtly tells C to leave them alone. When confronted by B about the rude response, A explains: "I thought that if I answered this young man, he might stay with us and keep the conversation going – next, he might board the train with us - next, he might get off the train with us – next, it might happen that my daughter D will come to meet me at the station – next, my daughter and the young man might like each other – next, they might start dating and will eventually marry – next, my daughter might end up unhappy because she married a man who can't

relations) admit different instantiations in the lower levels (e.g., a worldview instantiated in different plays). Mental modeling enables predictions, explanations and planning under unfamiliar conditions, by 'running' models to generate predictions and then using predictions to inform the responses. These functions are made possible by coordinations preventing combinatorial explosion that would have made them intractable. One more literary example (adopted from [19]) will help

have surfaced in the text features detected by statistical measures [17].

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95594*

(state trajectories), as shown in **Figure 2**.

illustrating these important notions.

even buy himself a watch."

#### *Brain Functional Architecture and Human Understanding DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95594*

*Connectivity and Functional Specialization in the Brain*

quoted passages in Shakespeare's literary legacy.

*Signifying nothing."*

plays, for example:

**"***Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,*

conception of the play and controlled its unfolding.

**Prospero***. "…Yea, all which is inherit, shall dissolve,*

*Is rounded with a sleep." The Tempest, Act 4, scene 1*

*And like this unsubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind, we are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life*

any time "hereafter", must have been decided from the start precisely to motivate the striking expression of despair and the subsequent monolog which expanded the meaning of the play from a chronicle of particular (imaginary) events to a philosophical generalization concerning the inescapable drama of the human condition. The monolog starts with the two lines above and concludes with some of the most

The *Tragedy of Macbeth* involves 31 personages, including witches and apparitions, acting in small groupings in 25 consecutive scenes, as shown in **Figure 1**. The sparse matrix in **Figure 1** reveals the overall organization of the play emanating from the organization of the author's mental model that, presumably, formed at the

To underscore, **Figure 1** connotes that, in the mental model, interactions between personages are neither serial nor parallel but simultaneous (or "coinstantaneously co-ordinated", as termed by Jean Piaget in [18]). For example, in scene 3, witches prophesize to Macbeth which results in changing the state of his mind; in scene 7, Macbeth influenced by the prophecy kills Duncan, which was made possible by Duncan's arrival in Macbeth's castle in scene 6, etc. Macbeth's monolog expresses Shakespeare's pessimistic worldview that is echoed in his other

Arguably, the corpus of Shakespeare's work, i.e. all 884,647 words in 118, 406 lines, is a congruent expression of a worldview rendering all human affairs, excepting those serving the basic survival needs, both superfluous (see the epigraph to this chapter) and devoid of significance. It appears that exceptionally tight action coordination in the plot of *Macbeth* combined with succinct expressions of the

Macbeth *plot comprises tightly coordinated interactions among numerous personages and unfolds in consecutive* 

**74**

**Figure 1.**

*scenes each involving a subset of personages.*

author's worldview consistent with other such expressions throughout the corpus have surfaced in the text features detected by statistical measures [17].

To summarize what has been suggested up to this point: "apprehending general relations in a multitude of particulars" (per the definition in Webster's Dictionary) takes the form of constructing simultaneous memory structures where entities and their behavior are tightly coordinated. "Relations" are different forms of behavior coordination, i.e., a particular manner in which changes in one entity entail changes in other entities. When entities admit multiple states and a variety of state transitions, relations determine particular mappings between state transition sequences (state trajectories), as shown in **Figure 2**.

Models can form hierarchies where relations in the upper-level models (general relations) admit different instantiations in the lower levels (e.g., a worldview instantiated in different plays). Mental modeling enables predictions, explanations and planning under unfamiliar conditions, by 'running' models to generate predictions and then using predictions to inform the responses. These functions are made possible by coordinations preventing combinatorial explosion that would have made them intractable. One more literary example (adopted from [19]) will help illustrating these important notions.

Two elderly gentlemen, A and B, are waiting together for a train when a presentable looking young man (C) approaches A, politely asking for the time. After a short glance at C, A curtly tells C to leave them alone. When confronted by B about the rude response, A explains: "I thought that if I answered this young man, he might stay with us and keep the conversation going – next, he might board the train with us - next, he might get off the train with us – next, it might happen that my daughter D will come to meet me at the station – next, my daughter and the young man might like each other – next, they might start dating and will eventually marry – next, my daughter might end up unhappy because she married a man who can't even buy himself a watch."

Note that the model was a) composed on the spot to account for a peculiar set of circumstances (as opposed to being retrieved by matching or forged by filling slots in some pre-fabricated template), b) included a chain of tightly coordinated components connecting current conditions to their likely remote consequences (the prediction) and c) enabled using predictions to form a response deviating sharply from the habitual pattern (i.e., rude response to a polite question). More precisely, the model formed by A is a composition of globally coordinated and tightly constrained activities (e.g., C could choose any spot on the platform but was pinned down to the vicinity of A and B, he could board any train and get off anywhere but was constrained to follow A and B, daughter D could be doing anything anywhere but was constrained to appear at the railway station at the time of train's arrival, etc.). The model instantiates a general relation (between income and matrimonial success) held by A, enabling him to predict events in the distant future (D will be unhappy) based on the current cue (C has no watch), and then to use this prediction to inform the immediate response and to explain the prediction and the response to B.

#### **Figure 2.**

*Relations establish coordinations between state trajectories. Models are simultaneous structures coordinating deployment of relations and self-initiated state changes (e.g., deploying relation "Macbeth* kills *Duncan" is preceded by Duncan's decision to put himself in the harm's way, by visiting Macbeth's castle).*

Importantly, models admit deliberately inserted counterfactual variations (e.g. A could have second thoughts and imagine C owning an expensive watch and asking for time because it had accidentally stopped) and generate the corresponding predictions (e.g., a satisfactory marriage) without revisiting the path (i.e., skipping over the sequence "C will stay with us, board the train with us, etc.)). Similarly, the model allows assessing global impact of local changes in one of the components without giving consideration to other components (e.g., one does need to trace the chain of coordinations in order to realize that failure in one element (e.g., D does not come to the station) will fail the entire chain and cancel the prediction). Crucially, models 'resist' relaxation of constraints, requiring forceful (deliberate) insertion of variations (i.e., under the model, the thoughts of D failing to appear, or C owning an expensive watch, etc. do not come to mind, as opposed to being rejected upon examination).

To summarize, eliminating degrees of freedom in mental models entails removing from consideration an otherwise exploding multitude of alternatives, thus making predictions both attainable and usable (i.e., delivered within the time window demanded by the situation). Models admit local variations consistent across the model (e.g. Macbeth's decision to kill Duncan in scene 7 is consistent with what happened to him in scene 2, etc.) and suppress spurious variations. As a result, understanding yields the experience of having succeeded in grasping "general relations in multitudes of particulars", thus turning an intractable mess into a well ordered structure.

The next section turns from literary scenarios to realistic ones, seeking to illustrate the extremes (amazing successes and baffling failures) in the operation of understanding.

#### **2.2 From children's games to revolutionary discoveries**

### *2.2.1 Baffling failures*

Children at an early age often fail to connect and coordinate events taking place right in front of them, as follows. The child is shown a toy which is subsequently placed under a cover allowing her to retrieve the toy. After a few successful repetitions, the toy is transferred, in full view of the child, to another spot where it is placed under another cover. After some hesitation, the child looks for the toy, not in the spot to where it was just moved but in the previous one [20].

Claudius Galen, an outstanding philosopher and physician in the Roman Empire, formulated a theory of blood production and processing in the body (circa 150 AD). The theory asserted that blood is produced in the liver from ingested food, rises to the lungs through the right side of the heart, crosses through pores to the left side where it is mixed with inhaled air and, finally, gets distributed throughout the body and consumed by the tissue (the surplus is expelled with sweat and urine). In this schema, heart remains a reservoir where blood is collected and treated (mixed with air) on its way from the source (liver) to the sink (tissues). In the XIth century, Galen's works were translated into Latin and became a dogma that dominated medical profession for over 500 years. Ironically, bloodletting was one of the most frequent treatment modalities in the medieval medicine, but neither the viewing of blood streams spurting from incisions nor the evidence of heart's incessant beating in one's own chest could cause questioning of the dogma. In 1628, English physician William Harvey published a book presenting a simple and cogently argued model of blood circulation. Moreover, he pointed out absurdities inherent in the dogma (e.g., the liver would have to produce several times the body weight in blood every day if the blood was being absorbed). Despite their undeniable strength (a simple model

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accuracy.

*Brain Functional Architecture and Human Understanding*

accounting fully of the available data and revealing critical shortcomings in the earlier account), Harvey's ideas were met with ridicule [21, 22]. The medical profession was unable to overcome the inertia and re-structure the entrenched model, thus failing to apprehend coordination between a few vital variables. Galen was an expert on pulse diagnosis and published a treaties on the subject, which makes his conceptual blind spots particularly baffling. Perpetuation of Galen's model would have arrested progress in medicine, causing incalculable losses (think of Galenic

In the 1820–1835 time period, Michael Faraday formulated key ideas of the field theory postulating relations between electric and magnetic phenomena which, in the preceding decades, were commonly viewed as being totally unrelated. Expressed in a mathematical formalism by James Clerk Maxwell, the Faraday - Maxwell model of electromagnetism depicted propagation of electric and magnetic fields as tightly coordinated processes. Faraday's conceptualization of fields envisioned material entities of a kind that are not perceptually accessible but permeate space and carry force. In a brilliant feat of expansive insight, Maxwell realized the existence of relations between electromagnetic waves, light and perception of color. These findings have been propelling advances in physics and technology, until the

Modern physics (quantum mechanics, astrophysics) deals with entities that are not directly observable. Literature reports that key ideas concerning quantum processes were formulated by Werner Heisenberg (circa 1925) following an insight he allegedly received when taking a walk in the park at night and observing a passer by appearing in illuminated areas under lamp posts and disappearing in the shadows when leaving those areas [23]. The position and movement of the person between the posts remained undetermined, suggesting the idea of indeterminate states of electrons in the atom when transiting between energy levels (somewhat similar to indeterminate states of characters in a play when transiting between scenes, as in **Figure 1**). Quantum mechanics proved to be the most successful physical theory ever formulated, predicting the outcomes of particle interactions with unparalleled

As reported in [24], an explosion on a DC-10 passenger airliner incapacitated one of three engines and demolished the hydraulic system, causing loss of control mechanisms for the remaining two engines except for their thrust levers. Hydraulic systems are built with triple redundancy, bringing the odds of losing control due to hydraulic system failure to less than one in a billion. Accordingly, no protocol has been ever created for handling such occasions and no training was ever offered. When the aircraft started pitching violently up and down (a phugoid pattern), the pilot had a short time window to figure out how to suppress phugoids and land the aircraft. According to pilot's recollections, a simplified model was formed in his mind that accounted for the location of the remaining two engines and suggested a maneuvering strategy using differential thrust. The strategy was not only unfamiliar but grossly counterintuitive, requiring decelerating when the aircraft was climbing and accelerating when it was heading down. When flight conditions were reproduced in a simulator, numerous pilots failed to figuring out a course of action and kept crashing (could not make the runway after dozens of attempts) [24].

Samuel Reschevsky, a chess prodigy born in 1911 in Poland, learned the game at the age of four and at the age of eight was defeating champions of his country in tournaments, as well as beating scores of opponents, including master-level players, in public demonstrations of simultaneous play. Although cognitive difficulties faced

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95594*

present day and into the foreseeable future.

cardiology).

*2.2.2 Spectacular successes*

#### *Brain Functional Architecture and Human Understanding DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95594*

accounting fully of the available data and revealing critical shortcomings in the earlier account), Harvey's ideas were met with ridicule [21, 22]. The medical profession was unable to overcome the inertia and re-structure the entrenched model, thus failing to apprehend coordination between a few vital variables. Galen was an expert on pulse diagnosis and published a treaties on the subject, which makes his conceptual blind spots particularly baffling. Perpetuation of Galen's model would have arrested progress in medicine, causing incalculable losses (think of Galenic cardiology).
