romansland

Single cell sentience

There is a debate whether thoughts or memories are physically located somewhere in a brain. It is still unclear whether there exist such a thing as a “grandmother braincell” that activates whenever you think of your grandmother. Or more clearly: the activation of that cell really represents thinking about your grandmother, and all relations and associations with that thought are the neural connections of that particular brain cell. I once went to a lecture of physicist De Gennes, who is now doing work on the nature of memory, who talked about the grandmother braincell. Recently there was also news on the discovery of the “Jennifer Aniston brain cell“, a cell which represents thinking about the actress from the TV sitcom Friends.

Okay, now here’s a thought: suppose it would be true, that each concept can be related to a particular brain cell. Then I can think of a particular concept, namely a brain cell that is related to the concept of itself. Can you imagine? The concept of a brain cell that thinks about itself is a thought, and therefore it must be represented by a brain cell in your brain. Then, indeed, that cell is thinking about itself when it activates. It reminds me a bit of Brouwer’s fixed point theorem.