Man is an integrated mechanism

We used to think that sleep was a neurobiological phenomenon and that its purpose and structure were located in the brain.

“Everyone thought that sleep is of the brain, by the brain and for the brain. We overlook the fact that we are not brains: we are mechanisms, we are integrated. Everything we do is integrated with everything else,” explains neuroscientist Paul Shaw of Washington University in St. Louis.

The first cracks in this brain-centric view began to appear when Swiss scientist Irene Tobler noticed that cockroaches sleep unconsciously. Recently, a new discovery has completely changed the narrative. We have learned that even the simplest creatures, organisms with very little brain, also sleep. For example, a study was conducted using a hydra, one of the simplest forms of animal life. Instead of a brain, the hydra has nerve networks, the most basic nervous systems in nature. In 2021, a group of Japanese scientists demonstrated that hydras sleep. These tiny freshwater organisms are living proof that sleep evolved before the brain. More and more scientists are really looking at peripheral tissues and asking how the body can impact the brain, and how the brain can impact the body, specifically with regard to sleep regulation.

In his research, neuroscientist Paul Shaw hypothesises that there are situations that the brain cannot regulate alone; in association with the damage that has occurred, sleep can reduce the activation energy for the brain’s circuits to begin to find a solution. The idea is that when we sleep, we consume less energy. The energy we use then is used in a different way. We support functions that we could not support if we were awake. Research into the hydra offers the first of a growing body of evidence that sleep first evolved to regulate metabolism and improve a repairing function, and only later took on brain-related functions. Sleep and metabolism are closely related.

To contextualise with art: if human mechanisms build themselves in relation to their surroundings, this implies that the intrinsic nature of a thing or being is not limited to an individual. The human being is an integrated organism constituted by its environment, its microbiota and peripheral elements. The artist reveals not only his identity, but also his relationship to the elements, which are themselves constitutive of his own construction. He reveals energies that allow us to be more in tune with the world around us. The artist enables the observer to have a more harmonious relationship with things, in a global manner. This infers that the subject is not the artist, but the effects of the work on the observer*, which can facilitate his or her ability to adapt to the environment. The work of art is linked to the inside and the outside, and the mind is inseparable from the body.

* Physicist Jean-Claude Picard explains that when we look at a work of art, we separate the lines, depth, shape, colour and movement… All these factors are processed in different locations in our brain. The brain will reconstitute them in phases, in a synchronised synthesis. For hearing, there is the pitch, the rhythm of the sounds, the timbre. The many factors are analysed in different areas of the brain, are then reconstituted and so bring us pleasure or sometimes displeasure.

The human brain is unique because our system is designed to adapt to its environment

Albert Einstein’s brain weighed only 1.2 kg and that of Nobel Prize winner Anatole France 1.1 kg. That’s not a great deal but it is not the size of the brain that makes it creative. Scientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel has developed a new technology to count the number of nerves in the brain. What she measures is the number of processors, of which there are many: around 100 billion.

Recently, she measured the number of nerves in the brain of an African elephant as the elephant’s brain is huge, bigger than a human brain. Indeed, the elephant has a brain three times the size of that of a human, but most of the networks are at the back of the brain. The number of nerves in the cortex of the human brain is larger and wider than in any other being. The difference is that the human brain is very connected. This means that it has the ability to move information from one area to another very easily, which is essential for creativity.

Neuroscientist Idan Segev of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem gives an example*: “a glass involves the concept of the glass, its shape which is associated with vision, taste, touch; so when we integrate the concept of a glass, we have to elaborate and call into action many modules or modalities, which interfere with different regions located in this context in the back of the brain, in the front and in the side, and these regions have to be connected to handle different types of information, to generate language, for example.” We have 3 to 4 km of connections which represents 100 million connections, and locally we have many circuits. We develop our brain more slowly than other animals. Thirty thousand networks are activated locally. The number of synapses and connections decide the dynamics of our system: not only the connections between the different regions, but also the connections within each region.

This system is designed to adapt to its environment, and this implies that artistic expression does not limit itself merely to revealing the ‘essence’ of its creator or his life, but enables the observer to be more in tune with things in a global manner.

* In the context of the conference “The brain and artistic creation”.