8 commentary by james h. schwartz (new york)

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Commentary by James H. Schwartz (New York)James H. Schwartz

a

aCenter for Neurobiology & Behavior, 722 West 168th StreetResearch Annex, New York,

NY 10032

Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

To cite this article:James H. Schwartz (2000) Commentary by James H. Schwartz (New York), Neuropsychoanalysis: AnInterdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 2:1, 36-37, DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2000.10773280

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36

Commentary

by ames

H. Schwartz (New York)

How seriously should we take Crick and Koch's idea

of an unconscious homunculus?

The homunculus was defined by Paracelsus in a

treatise published in 1572 entitled De natura rerum

which gives the recipe for synthesizing the creature

(Pagel, 1982,

p

117). A homunculus is produced by

incubating sperm in a hermetically sealed vessel for

60 days in horse manure at high temperatures. Then,

if

fed properly, the product is an artificial man generated

without the assistance

of

a woman (paracelsus, p

124). Like other instances of artificial men (most nota

bly, the Golem), the homunculus was regarded as we

now regard extraterrestrials-with fear, disbelief, and

satire. The concept of the little man, however, was

taken quite seriously by late seventeenth-century biol

ogists to explain the role of sperm in reproduction.

Some early microscopists actually drew a little man

in the sperm. Others, like Antoni van Leeuwenhoek,

who saw only worms in his sperm samples, neverthe

less concluded that man with all of his adult parts first

exists

as

a little animal contained within the sperm.

Still others placed the little man in the egg (Pinto

Correia, 1997).

At the beginning of the eighteenth century,

knowledge about how animals develop was primitive.

There were two warring schools. One believed that

the material in the egg was preformed, being arranged

precisely as in the mature animal. For the preformist

school, the sperm simply acts as a trigger. The other

school, the epigenetic, considered the material within

the egg to be formless. A little man fully formed in

miniature in the sperm would grow after entering

the egg

We now know that neither school was correct and

that postulating a little man either in the sperm or in

the egg does not provide an adequate explanation of

development. Yet, there are aspects of the idea of a

homunculus that are formally correct. Although a little

man does not actually exist in either gamete fully

formed, he is present in the form of information: the

genome provides a complete plan for the develop

mental program.

Crick and Koch tell us that their unconscious ho

munculus is not to be confused with Penfield's anthro-

James H. Schwartz is professor of Cellular Biophysics Physiology,

and

of

Neurology and

of

Psychiatry, Center for Neurobiology Behavior,

Columbia University, New York.

James H. Schwartz

poid maps

of

sensory and motor areas in the cortex

(Penfield and Rasmussen, 1950). Nevertheless, these

maps are in the craniological tradition initiated by

Franz Joseph Gall at the beginning of the nineteenth

century (Spurzheim, 1815) and subsequently elabo

rated and corrected by Paul Broca, Karl Wernike, John

Hughlings Jackson, and others. Mental functions can

now be mapped by direct recordings of neuronal firing

using microelectrodes (in human patients during sur

gery for epilepsy, as done by Penfield) or by assessing

the increased blood flow resulting from the metabolic

activity of neurons when they fire using modern tech

niques

of

imaging-positron emission tomography

(PET) scan and functional magnetic resonance im-

aging (MRl). Perhaps the most extensive mapping of

brain function has been accomplished for the visual

system, where about 30 distinct functional brain areas

have been delineated. Because it has been so well

charted, Crick and Koch have understandably chosen

to focus their attention on the visual system (Crick

and Koch, 1990, 1995, 1998).

Two fundamental assumptions underlie these

modern methods of mapping mental functions. The

first is obvious: that the functions result from the activ

ity

of

nerve cells. This assumption, called the aston

ishing hypothesis by Crick (1993), however obvious,

must be made clear. It presumes that consciousness is

an ordinary biological phenomenon emerging out

of

the firing behavior of a specific and identifiable subset

of neurons, the neural correlates of consciousness

(NCC).

The other fundamental assumption about map

ping a neural function is that the localization

of

the

increased neural activity will help to explain how the

particular function works. (Thus, it is clear that lo

calizing lesions in the brain can be medically useful,

but this has been appreciated at least since the seven

teenth century

B.C.

[Breasted, 1930].) Understandably,

the usefulness of this second assumption has been

most clearly demonstrated with Penfield-type homun

culi and other parts

of

the brain where function is

organized somatypically.

n

these regions the struc

tural organization of the brain appears to make mecha

nistic sense. The arrangements of neurons that follow

the body image in the cortex seem immediately intelli

gible. The somatypic organization of the primary sen

sory and motor cortices most likely stems from the


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Commentary on the Unconscious Homunculus

arrangement of neurons and target organs during phy

logeny and development. In simpler animals and early

in development, neurons tend to be close to the body

part they innervate. Consequently, neurons that con

trol adjacent body parts continue to be close together

and stay together as the nervous system develops. The

adult organization does not follow the body plan di

rectly, presumably because the arrangement can be

altered during development. Despite the distortion, the

design principle usually is obvious. (As basic a feature

as crossing over still remains to be explained, how

ever.) Without even a clue about the design principle

of consciousness, understanding the relationship be

tween brain structure and consciousness promises to

be very difficult.

Crick and Koch's hypothesis of an unconscious

homunculus does not depend on any anatomical local

ization. Rather, it has the quality of a psychological

construct involving inferred mental functions only: the

homunculus receives information about the world and

executes voluntary actions. What becomes conscious

is only a representation of some of the activity of the

unconscious homunculus. These representations be

come conscious only in the form of sensory imagery

and of spoken and unspoken speech. Nothing reaches

consciousness directly: perceptions must be processed

by the homunculus (which, as defined, is uncon

scious). Consciousness therefore functions as the

mind's inner eye.

Crick and Koch cite Freud (1923) as a precursor

to the idea that consciousness is indirect, but Freud, I

think wisely, puts in a caveat: It dawns upon us like

a new discovery that only something which has once

been a perception can become conscious, and that any

thing arising from within apart from feelings) that

seeks to become conscious must try to transform itself

into external perception (emphasis added). Apart

from

feelings -here

the brain's activities can be di

vided into three functions: sensory, motor, and motiva

tional. While it is difficult to picture how motor

activity per se might become conscious, must drives

and feelings first be converted into sensory percep

tions to become conscious?

Much of the brain's activity takes place in the un

conscious and is either extremely difficult to bring into

consciousness (like Freud's preconscious) or is never

available to consciousness (like the processing of sen

sory information, the mechanisms that produce qualia,

the motor plans used to maintain posture, ride bicycles,

or play the piano). To some extent, therefore, Crick and

Koch's formulation of

consciousness

as

an extension

of

an unconscious homunculus is similar to psychological

37

formulations like Freud's structural theory of the mind

and his views on the relationship between conscious

ness and the unconscious (Freud, 1939).

These philosophical psychological formulations

that deal with poorly defined processes and interac

tions between unidentified parts that potentially should

map onto the brain bear resemblance to the homuncu

lus postulated in the seventeenth century to explain the

magnificent plan by which the human body develops.

What was correct about that homunculus is that it

specified that a precise and complete plan is present

in some form. What is clear and important about Crick

and Koch's idea is the recognition that consciousness,

an extension

of

a neural entity with an as yet indeter

minate anthropoid design, can be approached experi

mentally with neurobiological methods.

References

Breasted, J. H. (1930), The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus,

2 vols. Chicago: University

of

Chicago Oriental Insti

tute Publications.

Crick, F. (1993),

The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific

Search for the Soul.

New York: Simon Schuster.

Koch, C. (1990), Some reflections on visual aware

ness.

Cold Spring Harb. Symp. Quant. Bioi., 55:953-962.

(1995), Are we aware of neural activity in

primary visual cortex? Nature, 375:121-123.

(1998), Consciousness and neuroscience.

Cereb. Cortex, 8:97-107.

Freud,

S.

(1923), The Ego and the Id. Standard Edition,

19:1-59. London: Hogarth Press, 1961.

(1939), n outline

of

psychoanalysis. Psychical

qualities. Standard Edition, 23:144-147. London: Ho

garth Press, 1964.

Pagel, W. (1982),

Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philo

sophical Medicine in the Era

of

the Renaissance,

2nd

rev. ed. Basel: Karger.

Paracelsus (1572), De natura rerum. The Hermetic and AL-

chemical Writings

of

Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus

Bombast,

of

Hohenheim, called Paracelsus the Great,

Now

for

the First Time Faithfully Translated into En

glish,

Vol.

1

Hermetic Chemistry, ed. A. E. Waite. New

Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1967.

Penfield, W., Rasmussen, T. (1950), The Cerebral Cortex

of Man: A Clinical Study of Localization of Function.

New York: Macmillan.

Pinto-Correia, C. (1997),

The Ovary

of

Eve.

Chicago: Uni

versity

of

Chicago Press.

Spurzheim, J. G. (1815), The Physiognomical System. Lon

don: Baldwin, Craddock, and Joy.

James

H.

Schwartz

Center for Neurobiology & Behavior

722 West 168th Street Research Annex

New

York

NY 10032

8 commentary by james h. schwartz (new york)

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