Thoughts on current neuro research, and classics of the field. Much of what you find here in the near future will be a detailed reading of James’ Principles of Psychology and Cajal’s Texture of the Nervous system. See the first blog post The Project if you’re new here and want some more context.
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Methods and madness
Cajal gives us a really evocative sense of what we’re up against as investigators of the brain. It’s a jungle, a nest of nests, a glorious and spectacular mess of wormy processes and crisscrossing fibers. In college textbooks you see cartoon neurons in isolation (like the one below, on the left), with their various protrusions Read more
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On art and method
Cajal throws things into a different gear in chapter 2 of the Textura, giving us a “Review of Research Methods and Resulting Discoveries.” If you’re not a neuroscientist, this probably sounds about as exciting as chewing on sawdust, especially after some very high-minded meditations in chapter one about the origins of nervous systems, “psychic cells,” Read more
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Habit and self-loathing
More than any other chapter of The Principles so far, the one on Habit really gives the sense that James is trying to work through something, for himself. I see a lot of guilt and self-contempt in these pages; lofty, troubled, and complex feelings about work and responsibility. When I take the view from 10,000 Read more
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It is being counted none the less
The reason James’ chapter on ‘Habit’ is so deservedly famous is probably for its final few pages, which discuss “the ethical implications of the law of habit.” He assures us these are “numerous and momentous” (in case you had your doubts that brain plasticity had something to do with the moral order). James is at Read more
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The feeling of “proper management”
To what extent are we out “in front” of our actions, and involved in their selection, maintenance, and monitoring? Every so often, sometimes for weeks at a time, I get this unsettling awareness of how many of my behaviors are just kind of happening, with essentially no contribution from the little floaty “me” that daydreams, Read more
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The effortless custody of automatism
Why do we have habits, and what are they good for? James has two answers. The first is that “habit simplifies the movements required to achieve a given result, makes them more accurate and diminishes fatigue.” In general, the more we can hand over to what James calls, quite poignantly, “the effortless custody of automatism”, Read more
The Excitable Membrane 