Who calls me,
that from the hard center
of a balloon that hides me inside
Wings Did you wear fast?
Who takes me out of me? Who gives me voices?
Calderón de la Barca (The Great Theater of the World)
Sometimes we look at the stars in that relentless search for an alleged company that makes sense of our earthly life, subject to stamps. But the last border, the one that would explain why we are here, what we are, is not beyond, but within us, Because it is our mind, and only this, the one that has manufactured the worldand has raised realities that, in reality, do not exist. In case of a response, it will be in the image and likeness of what our neurons have woven, that is, our thinking, and will accommodate our needs.
The brain of a human being has eighty -six billion neurons connected by synapse in a sophisticated and indecipherable tangle. The teacher Rafael Yuste states that it is «the most fascinating fragment of the universe ». As he explains in his first dissemination essay, THE BRAIN, THE THEATER OF THE WORLD (Paidós, 2024), is the equivalent of having three Internet networks with 90,000 million web pages working at the same time, but only with the energy of a small bulb. Millions of years of evolution have created a sublime biological computing, which seems to know more than ourselves.
“This powerful machine capable of composing Goldberg variations, painting the Sistine Chapel, writing the Quixote or exterminate life is still a mystery“
This powerful machine capable of composing Goldberg variations, painting the Sistine Chapel, writing the Quixote or exterminate life remains a mystery, and therefore the administration of Barack Obama decided Kennedy in the 60-70, with the intention of deciphering the secrets of the mind, registering its activity and being able to change it through neurotecnology. The person who was in charge of this mission went to Professor Rafael Yuste. And it is him, with his determination and passion, who will take us to that moon.
This prestigious neurobiologist, Professor of Biological Sciences and director of the Neurotecnology Center of the University of Columbia, in New York, whose name is considered as a future Nobel Prizehe grew up in the Chamberí neighborhood in Madrid, and keeps great memories of the Ramiro de Maeztu Institute, where he studied, as well as his training at the Autonomous University and at the Jiménez Díaz Foundation Hospital. He left very young to the United States, where he has been living and developing his profession for 37 years. This book is, in part, a gesture of thanks to Spain, the country that made it the person who is today.
“The development of neuroscience and its contribution of a general theory would revolutionize neurology and psychiatry, allowing the design and creation of increasingly efficient therapies for brain diseases.” (Rafael Yuste)
“Santiago Ramón y Cajal spent their life by drawing these neurons forests, their butterflies of the soul“
All magic, what we believe is reality, happens in a tiny place: the cortex, a thin layer of just two millimeters folded thick on the outside of the brain circumvolutions. Neurons are responsible for creating a world model consisting of symbols, where we are included, and uses it to predict the future and act according to the information recorded in the specific centers of memory. Santiago Ramón y Cajal He spent his life drawing these neurons forests, their “butterflies of the soul”, which make up, using Yuste’s words, “aesthetically wonderful structures.” The hypotheses suggest that the central nervous system owes its existence to the movement, and predation. The networks of neuronal sets that the disciples of Sherrington and Cajal himself established as the functional unit of the brain are those that artificial intelligence is inspired today, although as Yuste points out, the common and essential computing has not yet occurred of the bark.
“Look well what I warn you: that you are humble and soft, because you may be dreaming, although you see you are awake.” Calderón de la Barca (Life is a dream)
“Rafael Yuste, inspired by his teachers and by the parents of modern neuroscience, is an enlightened romantic“
Is it possible to help all people suffering from mental and neurodegenerative diseases? What are dreams made, why do they happen? Why is the brain, today, the greatest challenge and mystery of science and medicine? For that, existence gives us Cajales, Sherringtons, Oa Yustes. THE BRAIN, THE THEATER OF THE WORLD It is a magnificent essay to enter this fascinating field, which explains, for the general public, the complex mechanisms of the mind that make us be as we are.
Rafael Yuste, inspired by his teachers and the parents of modern neuroscience, is an enlightened romantic who addresses with holistic vision – wearing science and humanism – the unexplored thickness of the neuronal circuits of the Cnidarians (animals with the most primitive nervous system) and mammals, In search of answers, or the appropriate questions. Lands that artists raised with the language of the senses, poetry, mathematics, philosophy, music … The arborescent invisible threads continue to dance for us, throwing clues and keys of doors that only the daring can open. But I don’t know if getting to the end would also be ours. Maybe that’s why the most real thing is something we have ever seen, like infinity.
“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” (Kant)
