June 29, 2003
3-D Mind
 | A young bird came into being, flying up from the nest, And fell back into the nest again. |
| Neuroscience discovers 3-D organization of brain function.
Up-down organization is concerned with right and wrong, judgment and levels of attention. Left-right organization is concerned with information processing, complementarity and symbolization. Front-back organization is concerned with the expected future and the remembered past. |
"In his three-book exploration of signs and synapse, Jacques Chevalier explores the links between brain science, studies of symbolism, and debates in ancient, modern, and postmodern philosophy to shed light on how brain and signs in language actually interface. In The 3D Mind the author pursues this dialogue across disciplines through an elegantly simple plan that mirrors the three-dimensional structure of the brain, proceeding from the saggital (right-left) to the axial (top-down) and the coronal (front-rear) dimensions of neuropsychology.
Half-Brain Fables and Figs in Paradise starts the trilogy on the lateral plane and explores the tendency of each hemisphere to specialize but also to complement or supplement the other hemisphere. Brain and sign processing is thus shown to involve bimodal weavings or reticles of right-hemispheric similarities and left-hemispheric differences.
The Corpus and the Cortex looks at brain and sign processing from an axial, or vertical, perspective, with an emphasis on neural projections that divide and connect the neocortex and the lower emotional system. It is on this plane that the mind draws lines between right and wrong, pleasure and pain, the practical and the impractical, the lawful and the lawless. The vertical axis also generates variations in levels of attention, ranging from the full awareness of "higher mental faculties" to the inhibitions of hyperpolarization and the autonomic impulses of lower brain and body activity. Signs and synapse are thus constantly wrapped in the foldings of judgments, emotions, and impulses of all kinds.
Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time brings the trilogy onto a third and final plane, the associative fibers that connect the rear lobes to the anterior regions of the brain.
This is the coronal plane that governs the weavings of remembrance and anticipation, recollections of the past and expectations of the future. "
Half-Brain Fables and Figs in Paradise: The 3D Mind, Volume 1
PBS: 3-D Brain Anatomy
3-D Relationships of Structures in the Forebrain