The human resting-state is characterized by spatially coherent brain activity at a low temporal frequency. The default mode network (DMN), one of so-called resting-state networks, has been associated with cognitive processes that are directed toward the self, such as introspection and autobiographic memory. The DMN’s integrity appears to be crucial for mental health. For example, patients with Alzheimer’s disease or other psychiatric conditions show disruptions of functional connectivity within the brain regions of the DMN.
Frontiers | Default Mode Network Complexity and Cognitive Decline in Mild Alzheimer’s Disease
Changes in regional activity levels and network connectivity occur across the lifespan within the default mode network (DMN) of resting brain function. Changes with age are noted in most components of the DMN, especially in medial frontal/anterior cingulate and posterior cingulate/precuneus regions.
Individuals with age-related disease such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) demonstrate additional default-related changes particularly in posterior cingulate/precuneus and hippocampal regions. As these regions are areas of known pathologic change in both normal aging and age-related disease,
“Does she know she is not well? Does she know how she was before? Does she remember her past? Then I realized "what about us", our 43 years of marriage, does she remember that past? She recognizes me well but how far back? Did our marriage begin in 1979 or 2017 when she was diagnosed? I wasn't sure where I was in her memory.
Sammie Marsalli, Preventing Her Shutdown
On dementia: It is like you are living in a world with no connection to anyone or anything. It is lonely. It is like nobody is there.”
Tamsin Calidas, I Am an Island
The scientific articles are for a quantitative approach to sense dementia, the qualitative approach is through the quotes of people that have dealt with an experience of seeing how seeing their loved ones be affected by dementia can affect their lives.
I think we can agree that the concept of experiencing our loved ones being affected by dementia, could be one of the highest horrors of the human experience. All the tension, love, and relationship that have been built to heights over years, just to fade as if it's always in a metaphysical state of what we call "the fading memory". We understand very little about it, yet we want to curse it, saying we are betrayed by the fact of the occurrence, and one thing we hate the most about despair being brought outside of our control, is acknowledging the fact that it is outside of our control.
Someone in the world develops dementia every 3 seconds. There are over 55 million people worldwide living with dementia in 2020. This number will almost double every 20 years, reaching 78 million in 2030 and 139 million in 2050.
A sense of identity is noshit a crucial part in the human experience, we establish our sense of self and make sense of our actions, love towards living, decisions based on our sense of self and future self. Lose the sense of "autobiographical memory", the past, present, and future can become one. Time is only a space, meaningless with no good reason for the body-vessel to walk on a meaningless plane of spacetime. Confused and in disarray, everything in the world has been as equally confusing as the nature of the wind, it comes and goes, but it never stays, as it can't be saved in memory, physically incapable of rendering.
Until living has become a biological obligation, without a sense to make up what "loving living" means.
This article is my excuse to explore myself to find out the answer to the meaning of life. I'm a person who likes finding out the truth, a self-awareness praiser. I don't know if there's a "human nature" sense to it. But I know a lot of people are also quite fascinated when they are on a journey to find out about the truth, which takes in different forms, for example scientists, researchers, or just even in business, people are rewarded by being right about things with money these days.
And one of my most entertaining truth or rather problem to find the truth is the question of "What does it mean to be human?" Answering philosophical questions rewards me, as much as I begin to understand better about myself, I can make sense of my feelings even better and how I can appropriately position myself into the world full of other humans. Tackling the questions of "Self Fulfilment, happiness, despair, what does it mean to be a normal human? what the fuck does it mean to be an outlier? Why do great artists could consecutively create good arts over and over? Why do people look like they are more talented than the other? What makes good music so fucking good that I cry my hearts out when I hear it? The heights of emotions! The heights of happiness! The beautiful experience! The so so fucking beautiful experience.
I ask the questions, very personal questions of "What do you think is the meaning of life?" to my friends, to even sometimes, to a cab driver, It always fascinates me on how they have different approach on how to answer the question in which they must always have a personal backstory into it. The obvious standard answer is obviously "The meaning of life is what you make out of it." Yet sometimes I hear answers like "There's no meaning, we are just a lifeless fleeting soul, controlled by the strings of God." Now that's the answer I don't really like, as I see it as it's too bleak and I really think one of the greatest gift in existing is the ability to acknowledge self-awareness and the leverage of it, the want to understand the nature of the self better using only the cards that we are dealt with, the cards of emotions and cognition.
The journey in finding the truth about “the nature" is I feel very different from classical physics. Classical physics took something very simple and hoped that it can be extrapolated in very different scenarios but rules are still hope it governs it until it's proven to be wrong. Throw a baseball in a certain angle at a certain speed, you get velocity and you can predict where it's going to land. It's apparent, replicable and thus the scientific method decides its truism. An object that has mass has gravity, then there's the gravity equation, which explains the nature of the giant star and the earth revolving around it ruled by the gravity equation, applicable on every object in the universe, from the moon and the earth to the supermassive blackhole sustaining the revolution of all stars circulating on the milky way, apparent, proofable, and replicable.
In 1687, Isaac Newton laid the foundation for classical mechanics in his work "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica". Newton's theory of gravity was proven successful in describing the motion of planets, moons, and other celestial bodies.
Then in 1904 - 1913, There were several people like how you learned in school like JJ Thompson, Rutherford, and Niels Bohr, with their ideas revolving (pun) on the idea that electrons orbits the nucleus, it's still classical but it fails to explain many things. Like assuming what makes the electron doesn't collapse into the center of the nucleus, the specific arrangement of electrons within the atom, the observed spectral lines in atomic spectra, shits like that.
Then they are completely butt-fucked by the quantum understanding of electron behavior. The gangsters of Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg came along. Schrödinger, like a true gangster, explained that electrons do not "orbits" a nucleus in a classical fashion, rather they move on a "wave function" which gives probability where an electron can be observed as an particle through observation, but before observation it behaves like a wave. Schrödinger's wave equation describes "orbitals", which means regions in space where there is higher "probability" of finding an electron than other spaces.
Heisenberg completely butt-fucked classical physics on a quantum scale as before of the baseball metaphor, the position and the momentum of a baseball can be determined precisely, but such is NOT the nature in the electron scale as Heiseberg's matrix mechanics explained the uncertainty principle, stating that certain parts of complementary properties such as position and momentum cannot be precisely known simultaneously.
Superposition allows multiple states to coexist simultaneously, which completely raw dogged classical physics. Where in classical physics, objects typically occupied a single, well-defined state. In quantum mechanics, the state of a system is described by its wave function.
For example, in the famous double-slit experiment, electrons can exist in a superposition of states where they have passed through both slits simultaneously. The interference pattern observed on the screen results from the constructive and destructive interference of these superposed states. This phenomenon illustrates the wave-like nature of particles in quantum mechanics.
Now everyone has gone to shit! Modern physics has completely trembled the understanding of the nature of the world.
Yet, what we really have only come to see is that everything is an emergent property. (Emergence happens when a system behaves in ways its individual units don't on their own.)
Every-"thing" in this world (every person, every table, every chair), divided to the least of its parts, to the bits of electrons, has stopped making "sense", yet the objects that are made up of the things that are making "sense".
I started writing almost everyday from 11 November 2023 of the article, The Art, I was cursing myself that I didn't want to be just a biological machinery, yet I wasn't able to see the nature of emergence in everything. The emergence of meaning and happiness. We can't dissect happiness as it is an "emergent property" it emerges itself, it shows itself, it doesn't guarantee, but the probabilistic wave of it can be found in some "areas/activities" rather than other "activities". Just like Schrödinger's wave equation describes "electron orbitals” that describes regions in space where there is higher "probability" of finding an electron than other spaces. We too are just finding happiness in regions of activities where there is higher "probability" of finding happiness than other spaces.
Same goes with "Meaning". "Meaning" does not show itself or write itself on a paper fallen from the sky, it's an emergent property by nature. Composed of serial experiences that are still inherently meaningless and aimless in nature, just like an electron moving on its "probabilistic orbitals", it's meaningless until the wave function collapses through observation or in a sense "awareness". Meaning becomes "clear" and judged by the one who bears awareness. Till 'The Self' grab 'meaning' and say 'there you are you little shit.'
Coming back to our roots: memory, cognition, and emotions.
I'm a strong believer that there's a direct correlation between A. One's opinion about life and its love towards it to B. How one acts in life. The strongest parable to this argument is from Albert Camus
But if it is hard to fix the precise instant, the subtle step when the mind opted for death, it is easier to deduce from the act itself the consequences it implies. In a sense, and as in melodrama, killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it. Let's not go too far in such analogies, however, but rather return to everyday words. It is merely confessing that that "is not worth the trouble."
In the face of such contradictions and obscurities must we conclude that there is no relationship between the opinion one has about life and the act one commits to leave it? Let us not exaggerate in this direction. In a man' s attachment to life there is something stronger than all the ills in the world. The body' s judgement is as good as the mind's, and the body shrinks from annihilation. We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us toward death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.
In which I feel then yes, it must be true. If we turn it upside down, one's grim opinion about life can literally justify the self to commit suicide, but one's beautiful opinion about life can allow the self to be on a constant state of eudaimonia (is a Greek word literally translating to the state or condition of 'good spirit'). Change one's opinion about life then the self would behave in a way that treats the world based on their mental belief. This is not only true metaphysically/ philosophically but also appears biologically.
As I would like to quote a phenomena written in Viktor Frankl's Book:
“I would like to tell you something, Doctor. I have had a strange dream. A voice told me that I could wish for something, that I should only say what I wanted to know, and all my questions would be answered. What do you think I asked? That I would like to know when the war would be over for me. You know what I mean, Doctor—for me! I wanted to know when we, when our camp, would be liberated and our sufferings come to an end.” “And when did you have this dream?” I asked. “In February, 1945,” he answered. It was then the beginning of March. “What did your dream voice answer?” Furtively he whispered to me, “March thirtieth.”
When F—— told me about his dream, he was still full of hope and convinced that the voice of his dream would be right. But as the promised day drew nearer, the war news which reached our camp made it appear very unlikely that we would be free on the promised date. On March twenty-ninth, F—— suddenly became ill and ran a high temperature. On March thirtieth, the day his prophecy had told him that the war and suffering would be over for him, he became delirious and lost consciousness. On March thirty-first, he was dead. To all outward appearances, he had died of typhus.
Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man—his courage and hope, or lack of them—and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect. The ultimate cause of my friend’s death was that the expected liberation did not come and he was severely disappointed. This suddenly lowered his body’s resistance against the latent typhus infection. His faith in the future and his will to live had become paralyzed and his body fell victim to illness—and thus the voice of his dream was right after all.
The observations of this one case and the conclusion drawn from them are in accordance with something that was drawn to my attention by the chief doctor of our concentration camp. The death rate in the week between Christmas, 1944, and New Year’s, 1945, increased in camp beyond all previous experience. In his opinion, the explanation for this increase did not lie in the harder working conditions or the deterioration of our food supplies or a change of weather or new epidemics. It was simply that the majority of the prisoners had lived in the naïve hope that they would be home again by Christmas. As the time drew near and there was no encouraging news, the prisoners lost courage and disappointment overcame them. This had a dangerous influence on their powers of resistance and a great number of them died.
In which now that segment of the book perfectly encapsulates my thought about this when I wrote the article, All for One
Yeah i know and I agree but its still so absurd to think about it granularly, theres single individual cells that is somehow self aware by one’s opinion about life, the T Cells that helped immunity, the skin cells that gives wrinkles, the muscle joint that can be worn out through aging, all of it is on a perpetual cycle of giving and taking through information exchange by THE FUCKING MIND
Through the neurotransmitter of stress, the neurotransmitter of dopamine, elevated joy and the lack of dopamine that gives a reason for absence of activity and motivation, all of it is a play, a play that can be seen and traced back, consequences of boredom and the reward of optimism, all of it is orchestrated by the mind and communicated through neurotransmitters to single individual cells, it's so eerily beautiful. Skin cells live and die, it could not care less about the whole as T Cells could stop helping us prevent getting a flue but must pay the price of existing, being wired to the whole, the fucking individual beautiful biological human being
Apparently there is a correlation between one's opinion about life and its biological manifestation being "communicated" through biological means and affect. Yet through sensations of "happiness" to "sadness", all of those are just "subjective experiences" described in linguistics. Even the sense of identity. As much as we know and have delved on the first segment of the article about the crucial role of the default mode network (DMN), we at least can see how some certain "region" can have more influence on the sense of "self" while a self still can't describe itself in isolation without other humans.
But still, as much as emergent properties of "memories" can be praised, the default mode network alone is somewhat useless without the neurotransmitter that gives us a sense of pleasure, as much as we are incapable of tasting "sweet" if our taste receptor just one day stopped functioning, we will unable to feel the sweetness of chocolate ice cream again, or even the tanginess of sushi. This whole intricate play of a "biological entity" is a very complex system in which take one part of, then the whole will lose its part and the experience of living stopped performing to the "standard living", as much as if we lose our ability to taste, as much as incomprehensible shutdown of the synapses of dementia arrived.
Scientists and philosophers tried their best to pin down what makes up the nature of the universe only to find themselves all over again at the end of the tunnel. "You are what you make up of yourself, reflected by what you do - Me." I'm just out here typing in the afternoon because it makes me happy and I would think revisiting this article can sustain my constant state of Eudaemonia. Scientists can say "Oh consciousness is in this part of the brain, this part is what makes us alive!" Yeah but what good really comes out of it if the sense of "aliveness" is "less alive" when one can't even have a working synapse that sustains autobiographical memory? What good does it give for the brain if their serotonin receptors are numbed or have shut down to the point that the self can't feel any emotions even if he is surrounded by his loved ones?
Scary as it may seems, we must embrace to live in a world, even the fundamental building block that constitutes our being, are "trippy" in nature as electrons moving in probabilistic waves and even we are futile to the demise of the incomprehensible shutdown of the synapses that sustains our sense of self and identity.
Yet we are gifted with the cards of emotions and cognition that helped us be happy in this life that is "trippy" and prone to unreasoning absurdities that shows itself in faces of (despair, sadness, betrayal, even the death of the synapses of memory of our loved ones). We are the writer of the meaning of our lives and even our biological agents that sustain our living are affected by our opinion about life.
Truly is there any greater ignorance than to curse its agent of life and call it "just a mere biological machinery" not knowing how much of our biological agents and the "trippiness" of it is what sustains even the most raw emotion of love?
Until "meaning" is not found as it lives on a metaphysical plane of probabilistic functions, which is sometimes there and sometimes not. Just like his cousin, named "happiness" are sometimes there and sometimes not.
The Self travels itself through the plane of spacetime, seeing objects made out of probabilistic functions in the quantum scale but deterministic and classical in the macro scale.
Things, people, and objects, are still inherently meaningless in nature until the self goes through experience with certain people that he has met and found out that certain people made him feel feelings. The Self somehow finds it to be such a "default/nature-ish" to be happy when the people that he cares about are happy, almost as if: poetic-synchronicity.
The Self is married to the Woman he loves and after 40 years of marriage, he finds his wife to be ill, a condition called dementia. His wife no longer remembers him, she just stares at his bed confused and seemingly emotionless seeing a stranger of a man who is "supposedly" her husband is tearing up from the side of the bed.
The death of a certain synapses, the death of certain parts of the "biological machinery" has shown itself that it is capable of dying as the synapses stopped having depolarization and the ion channels have stopped sustaining itself and the part of the brain "responsible" for memory and autobiographical memory of the self ceases to function.
The husband is in despair beyond many heights of the average human have ever experienced. The betrayal of life that shows itself not out of conscious agent or humans, rather the same agent of cells that was responsible for the agent of love to come to fruition, the autobiographical identity of his wife.
Sadness, despair, the end to love, and fear, spiralled the man to insanity as he now curses himself from this occurrence, inevitably cursing himself for having these very human emotions of grief, sadness, and despair.
But at what or who is he is cursing really?
The same very biological agent that bred his feelings of love and limerence towards his wife?
As much as he wants to escape the clasp of despair and the toll of his ever-seemingly meaningless suffering sustained by the occurrence.
He can't detach himself from his emotions, as his emotions are wired to his existence as he will never marry his wife in the first place without it and can't even feel this despair of losing a part of his wife.
The card of emotions has failed the self, and there is only one card left to play with, the card of cognition. The only two cards that are wired in the existence of a human being.
Through cognition, comes acceptance. Through acceptance, comes peace of the condition. Through it all, semantics and meaning out of incidents are only true to the beholder of awareness, comes each to its own meaning and interpretation. For meaning that lives on a metaphysical plane of probabilistic functions, which is sometimes there and sometimes not. The beholder of awareness must have the courage to look meaning in the eye and say "You curse me in the most poetic sense possible, why must I look for you and create you out of nothing everytime this kind of shit happens? Through it all, incidents and absurdity of diseases and mishaps, you are sometimes there and sometimes not. How long can I sustain living like this?"
In which "Meaning" replies "Suffering is inevitable, but being in despair is an option. You can curse your ability to feel and out of hate to destroy me, yet you seek meaning in your life, guided by your emotions and cognition. It sometimes disappoints you but it sometimes leads you to the awe of the heavens. You seek orgasms over orgasms, in which after it all, I am sometimes there and sometimes not, I show myself only for the people who seeks me."
This is not science fiction, this is real life.