It's a Jungle in There: How Competition and Cooperation in the Brain Shape the Mind
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Authors: David A. Rosenbaum
It’s a Jungle in There
How Competition and Cooperation
in the Brain Shape the Mind
DAVID A. ROSENBAUM
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rosenbaum, David A.
It’s a jungle in there : how competition and cooperation in the brain
shape the mind / David A. Rosenbaum.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–982977–4
1. Cognitive psychology. 2. Brain. 3. Neuropsychology. I. Title.
BF201.R67 2014
153—dc23
2013028959
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
3. Fighting Neurons, Friendly Neurons
Most people wonder what makes them tick and what makes others tick, tock, or whatever else they do. We humans are naturally curious, and that curiosity extends to our desire to understand ourselves and others. That same curiosity led me to become a psychologist, specializing in the branch of psychology known as cognitive psychology—the science of mental function. Cognitive psychology is mainly concerned with basic processes of learning, thinking, perceiving, acting, and feeling. In recent years, cognitive psychology has formed tighter links with neuroscience than it had in the past. This is a healthy shift, reflecting an appreciation that the study of the mind is inseparable from the study of the brain. Increasingly, cognitive psychologists have seen that cognitive psychology, like psychology more broadly, should be viewed as a branch of biology.
This book takes that perspective to its logical conclusion. The argument offered here is that the overarching theory of biology, Darwin’s theory, should be the overarching theory of cognitive psychology. The way I mean this is a bit different from the currently popular view that mental and behavioral phenomena can be explained in terms of our evolutionary past, a perspective known as evolutionary psychology. The approach offered by evolutionary psychologists is one I will discuss here, though only near the end of the book and only briefly because it is not central to my argument. What I’ll focus on instead is the idea that Darwin’s insights apply to the inner workings of individual brains. The mind, I will argue, reflects competition and cooperation within the brain. The internal dynamics of such neural competition and cooperation give rise to the mind as we experience it.
Others have said similar things before, though they have focused mainly on the nervous system or—at the other end of the reductionist continuum—consciousness. This book focuses on what’s in between, on the kinds of basic mental phenomena that have been studied in the everyday world and, from
there, in cognitive psychology labs. The mental phenomena discussed here are ones covered in cognitive psychology textbooks, of which there are many, and in cognitive psychology classes, of which there are still more. Yet such textbooks (and perhaps such classes) have lacked a theory within which, or around which, to organize and motivate the material. A theme might be offered every so often to summarize some aspect of the research, such as the maxim that the mind goes beyond the information given, a phrase used by Jerome Bruner in a 1973 book that helped launch cognitive psychology. But telling students that they’re inquisitive doesn’t tell them much they don’t already know. Having a guiding theory is more satisfying, both pedagogically and scientifically.
My realization that Darwin’s theory could be usefully applied to cognitive psychology came in a lecture I was giving while teaching Introduction to Cognitive Psychology at Penn State University, where I have been on the faculty since 1994. It occurred to me in the midst of the lecture that it would be useful to summarize the facts I was presenting with a single phrase: “It’s a jungle in there.”
After I said this, I felt silly, like I had just said something that would come across as so cute, so juvenile, that the students would scoff at it. Yet after the words spilled from my lips, the students I thought were sleeping betrayed grudging signs of amusement, the students I thought were concentrating on crossword puzzles put down their pencils and looked up at me expectantly, and the students who always looked at me imploringly—the ones in the front who laughed at all my jokes no matter how poor the punch lines—smiled more sincerely than usual.
Encouraged by the students’ responses, I found myself saying the same thing over and over again. (We professors are subject to reinforcement by students as much as the reverse.) “It’s a jungle in there,” I repeated. The phrase became a mantra. I would describe a phenomenon and before I knew it, some student would raise his or her hand and say, “It’s a jungle in there, right?” The fact that the quote applied so often and resonated so well with the students led me to think the “jungle principle” is a useful way to present cognitive psychology. I also came to feel that the principle deserved more than passing reference in one class taught at one university by one professor. It deserved to be disseminated more widely, not just to students who might find the concept useful as a portal to cognition, but also as a preface to a theory that my colleagues could contemplate.
To pursue the idea that the mind reflects Darwin’s drama, you have to allow that there are inner entities doing things that unwittingly affect their chances of survival.
The thesis of this book, accordingly, is that minds are inhabited by such entities. To liven up the discussion, I’ll often refer to these entities as “demons,” “elves,” “imps,” “gnomes,” and other similar terms. Of course, I mean these only as metaphorical expressions. The cranial creatures to which I’ll refer eke out their livings by exciting or inhibiting their neighbors, doing so with no notion of their role in the larger ecosystem of which they’re a part. Different members of this neural tribe play special roles by virtue of where they happen to live in the neural neighborhood. Those on the “sensory shoreline” are specialized for sensing. Those on the “motor shoreline” are specialized for acting. Those in the interior are specialized for other functions, less directly tied to sensing or to acting but to functions in between. When I speak of neural gnomes, I never mean to ascribe to them intentions or awareness of what they are about. They are, simply, dumb mechanisms surviving or not depending on their fits to the environments they occupy.
Seeing the mind as an emergent product of a Darwinian ecosystem is a familiar gambit, echoing intellectual trends now popular in biology and cognitive science. Yet as far as I know, no one has used Darwin’s idea to cover cognitive psychology, at least in the broad-brush way offered here. I have pursued this approach believing that this manner of covering cognition may be useful not just for communicating “cog-psych” to students and a general audience, but also for building a theory around which cognitive psychologists and cognitive scientists more broadly (neuroscientists, philosophers, linguists, computer scientists, and anthropologists) can rally.
A rallying point for the field is needed, I think. For too long, cognitive psychology has been pursued without concern for a general theory. There are some researchers who have sought one, but what the field has mainly had on the research side, and on the teaching side too, is a series of disconnected phenomena, a rag-tag collection of curiosities—what you might find at a psychologist’s garage sale. I believe Darwin’s theory or, more generally, a theory that adopts a selectionist (survival-of-the-fittest) perspective, provides a way to place all cognitive phenomena under one tree.
Because a major aim of this book is to make cognitive psychology as inviting as possible for both students and seasoned professionals, I have tried to make this book as fun and accessible as I can. It’s saucy in spots (I’m not talking about food), it’s irreverent in other places (devout theists, be warned, though I mean no disrespect), and it takes seriously the advice, “Write as you speak.” My speaking style is chatty and, to the extent possible, humorous. If you want a deadly serious tome, this book is not for you. On the other hand,
if you want a book that doesn’t take itself too seriously despite its serious pedagogic and theoretical aims, this text may be more to your liking.
The argument offered here is meant as a scaffold, not a complete edifice. Someday the main idea sketched here may lead to a theory that makes specific, testable predictions. So far, it makes no pretense of doing so. Nor does it pretend to offer a comprehensive review of every topic. The subjects covered here are ones I find particularly interesting given my fascination with human perception and performance, a fascination that led to my being the editor of the
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
, a publication of the American Psychological Association. (I edited the journal from 2000–2005.) Other topics that some might find essential aren’t detailed here. Selectivity is part of mental function, however, as students of attention know. This book is the result of one person’s mental functioning, such as it is.