The human mind is always an unfinished project, says British journalist Caspar Henderson. An abstract entity susceptible to changes that are activated by the work and grace of our master organ: the brain, something more than a piece of meat wrapped in the shell of the skull. Because since the beginning of time, our brain has been evolving together with the instruments that the Homo sapiens has been inventing Therefore, the Homo sapiens is due to homo faber and vice versa.
The best example is the invention of fire, but more than its invention, it has been its use applied to the kitchen; The transition from raw to cooked has made possible the evolution of our brain. The British primatologist Richard Wrangham explains it to us in his book On fire (Captain Swing). According to his account, when our hominid ancestors began to cook their food, the brain grew in size and, with this, the evolutionary development of the mind also began. On the contrary, the digestive system was reduced.
The connection between the brain and the stomach is as evident as the fact that all the types of neurotransmitters that exist in our brain are present in the digestive system. One of them – serotonin – is 95% found in the intestine and participates in the exchanges between the brain and the intestine through the vagus nerve, which happens to be the longest cranial nerve: it goes from the medulla oblongata to the thorax, passing through the abdominal cavity.
In other words, the cellular connections between different organs are going to be conditioned by our own inventions. If we continue with examples, it is also worth highlighting the cane for the blind, becoming an extension of touch when sight is lacking. In the same way that it happened with the fire or with the mentioned stick, the technology that invades us is changing our brain although we do not realize it. And changing it for the worse in many cases. For example, our memory is going to be impaired by the lack of connections in the temporal cortex, since almost everything—from a telephone number to the multiplication table—has been relegated to a combination of keys on a digital device.
There are times when progress implies a return and the abuse of technologies can lead us to it. The same calligraphy is hardly practiced and, whether we like it or not, plasma screens have a negative influence on the development of our brain. Our perception of reality is changing since we look out at the world from a plasma screen. We no longer see it the same as decades ago, when everything was analog and, to make a phone call, you had to put your finger on the number wheel. With these things, our brains are transformed and our senses are changed.
It happens the same as with the invention of the personal watch, since its use spread, we no longer look at the sun in the same way; What’s more, now in summer, on the coasts of our geography, people look at it through the screen of a digital device when the sunset paints the sky red; an instant in time that turns out to be a truce between two questions that go from a moment before taking the photo, to the moment after taking that same photo, followed by more moments that coincide with more photos of that same moment.
the stone ax It is a section where Montero Glez, with a desire for prose, exerts his particular siege on scientific reality to show that science and art are complementary forms of knowledge.
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