This monograph is dedicated to the European Union's Human Brain Project.
The European Union is investing EUR 1.19 billion in the Human Brain Project
to research how the human brain works. The results so far have been rather
poor and the number of critics is growing. It cannot be due to enthusiasm.
The supporters expect huge advances in the treatment of diseases, but also
in the development of artificial intelligence, which could exceed the human
brain by orders of magnitude. So what is lacking?
Around 60,000 publications on this subject appear annually. In view of the
huge flood of information, it obviously needs a person who is willing and
able to not only internalize this amount of facts, but to recognize a common
thread that runs through them and ultimately leads to the recognition of the
principles of action of the brain. In his opinion, the author has solved
this task and is offering the European Union's Human Brain Project a
self-contained vertebrate brain theory.
Now the Human Brain Project is looking for a human brain theory, but we
should keep in mind that humans are undoubtedly vertebrates.
The theory developed here includes the development of the central nervous
system of vertebrates in the course of evolution, starting with the simplest
bilateria with a rope nerve system. Furthermore, it includes the derivation
of the functioning of many substructures of the brain in relation to the
signal processing that takes place in them. One flaw of this theory is that
it is in German. This deficiency can be remedied by a translation into the
English language. Someone who puts together the hundreds of thousands of
facts of brain research into a puzzle has no memory capacity left on his
hard drive to master the spoken and written English language.
The author has invested an estimated 20,000 hours of work in this project,
completely unselfishly and without remuneration, and he is unwilling to take
this theory to the grave unpublished, especially since he has already
started his seventieth year. This monograph is quasi his scientific
testament for the European Union. After submitting the monograph,
Springer-Verlag initially agreed to print this work and thus make it
available to the general public. After completion of the economic
calculations, however, no printing was carried out. Nevertheless,
Springer-Verlag and especially Dr. Thanks to Stephanie Preuss for the effort
involved.
Other publishers have also canceled due to inefficiency.
Therefore, this monograph is self-published. It is noticeable here that you
can neither fall back on a proofreading nor on talented graphic designers if
you do not want to completely ruin yourself financially. The reader is
therefore asked to be lenient.
***
To this day, the origin of the vertebrate brain is in the dark. It is
assumed that it developed from the simplest nervous systems of the most
elementary forms of life. The process started over 700 million years ago.
None of us have been there, and yet there are witnesses to this development.
Every neuron nucleus, every nerve cord, every neuronal substructure in the
vertebrate brain bears witness to the gradual development of the central
nervous system of the vertebrates.
The almost unmanageable amount of facts that have been gathered over the
millennia about the nervous system of the vertebrates, the brains of the
mammals and the human brain eludes a complex consideration just by its
abundance. The mere listing of the names of those who have made significant
contributions to the research of this subject is a specialty in itself.
Likewise, it seems impossible for the author to provide the primary source
for every fact, if science historians are concerned with this important
concern.
The fact that scientists in a wide range of fields have to deal with this
issue is making it difficult to elucidate the functioning of the central
nervous system in humans. For example, those processes in the cell membrane
of nerve cells that enable action potential require extensive knowledge in
the fields of organic chemistry and physics, even mathematical aspects have
to be taken into account. The structures of the human brain and those of
mammals and vertebrates are so complex that it takes many years to know the
most important of them.The tremendous complexity of the connections between
the different neuronal structures of the nervous system complicates the
recognition of a system that would be suspected. To make matters worse, in
neurology, which is a sub-area of ​​medical science, all substructures,
all nerve tracts, almost everything has been given Latin terms, which demand
a lot from the non-neurologists.
The longing for an answer to the origin of soul and spirit is unbroken. The
mathematicians took on this topic and created very abstract models to
analyze the development of intelligence in neural networks. The level of
abstraction reached is so great that you can still find objects in neural
networks that have similar properties to nerve cells, but you are looking in
vain for the substructures that are actually present in the human brain, for
example. No neural network has a central tegmental tract or a pyramidal
tract. Similar to the six-layer human cortex, there are layered neural
networks,but their stratification has absolutely nothing in common with the
neuronal layers of the brain. Of course, these researchers have the right to
develop completely abstract artificial systems that produce intelligence.
But others also have the right to design models that are based on the
structure and function of the real brain, as is intended in this monograph.
The theory presented here begins with the primordial mucus, with the
unicellular organisms, it leads to the chord data via the multicellular
organisms and the segmented bilateria. This is the only way to understand
how the central nervous system gradually emerged. And a development that has
spanned many millions of years, if you want to convincingly understand it,
cannot be short and sweet. It will be extensive, go into detail, have to
show every important development step, because only then will there be a
self-contained chain of evidence that is convincing enough. So the reader
will be asked for some patience and perseverance. One or the other will find
that they first have to close gaps in their knowledge,to understand the
theoretical elements presented. Chapters 1 and 2 therefore recapitulate the
current state of knowledge of the vertebrate brain and especially the human
brain. Only then does the description of the vertebrate brain theory
developed by the author begin.
The theory presented here may give the impression that the path of the
nervous system from the primitive bilaterium to Homo sapiens is somehow a
logical and legal sequence of individual development steps. But we should
keep in mind that at every stage of development there have been millions of
variations that have been different and the results of which have not led to
the path that vertebrates, mammals or even primates have followed. With all
the inherent logic, the development path shown here ultimately came about by
chance. In the derivation of the theory presented here, the author managed
to filter out the wealth of possible development variants over many
years,where on the one hand the neuronal connection corresponded to the
observed reality, on the other hand the signal processing taking place there
was seamlessly integrated into the emerging overall system. In retrospect,
many of the developed functional variants turned out to be incorrect and
were rejected, corrected or modified. Countless folders with hypotheses and
collections of facts filled the author's basement and testify to the efforts
to work out a match between theory and practice.In retrospect, many of the
developed functional variants turned out to be incorrect and were rejected,
corrected or modified. Countless folders with hypotheses and collections of
facts filled the author's basement and testify to the efforts to work out a
match between theory and practice.In retrospect, many of the developed
functional variants turned out to be incorrect and were rejected, corrected
or modified. Countless folders with hypotheses and collections of facts
filled the author's basement and testify to the efforts to work out a match
between theory and practice.
This monograph presents a hypothesis about the history of the development of
the central nervous system in vertebrates. May others decide whether the
evidence presented in this work supports this theory adequately. This could
possibly promote a new perspective. The current overestimation of the
synapses in the brain, which are to be represented as comprehensively as
possible in mathematical models, neglects the real signaling pathways in the
vertebrate brain. Anyone who knows all the neurons and their complete
synaptic connections in a real human brain does not yet know how it works.
The approximately one millimeter large roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans may
serve as an example,whose 302 neurons and about 5000 chemical synapses have
been completely recognized without their interaction being fully explained.
So despite knowing the complete structure, you don't know how his brain
really works.
Anyone who thinks that the source of intelligence is in the cortex cortex
will have to rethink their views. The human brain consists of innumerable
substructures. Every one of them is important. If a subsystem fails, this
usually has serious consequences. Doctors have written extensive specialist
books on what symptoms z. B. results in the failure of individual neuronal
structures. Examples include the thalamus, the reticular format, the
subthalamic nucleus, the striatum, the substantia nigra pars compacta, the
hippocampus, the amygdala, the hypothalamus, the cortex, the cerebellum, but
also the spinal cord and all sensory organs.All of these substructures only
play a subordinate role in the European Union's Human Brain Project.
The Connectome project is a much better help here, as it allows the real
structures in the brain to be recognized and studied. We should make more
efforts to consider the interaction of the individual parts in the formation
of theories. Only those who have broken down a pendulum clock, a gasoline
engine or the model of a steam engine into its individual parts can
understand its function. The same applies to the brain. Without a good
knowledge of the neuronal substructures of the vertebrate brains, their
function cannot be recognized.
At this point, we would like to thank everyone who supported the author in
his efforts.
Special thanks go to Ms. Almut Schüz from Tübingen and Mr. Günther Palm from
Ulm for the interest in this project, for your support and funding. We would
also like to thank Mr. Karl Zilles, Mr. Richard Hahnloser and Mr. Ulrich
Ramacher for their interest and encouraging tips.
Special thanks go to Mr. Leo Gerbilsky from Kiel for kindly appraising a
previous version of this monograph on behalf of the Springer publishing
house, even if it did not ultimately go to press at the time.
Much thanks go to Elisabeth Dägling for the many years of interest in the
topic, the lively exchange of ideas and the editing of the previous version.
Many thanks to Mr. Gerhard Roth, whose wonderful book “How unique is man?
The long evolution of the brains and mind ”was the key to thinking about the
gradual emergence of the recognized neural circuits of the vertebrate brains
in the course of evolution. We
don't know too little, we know too much.
The wealth of facts obscures the relationships to be recognized.
Andreas Heinrich Malczan
Oranienburg,
March 8th, 2020