October 14, 2007
Iâm sitting in the hot springs, having another late night discussion with Gregg, a psychiatrist from Ann Arbor (U of M). Heâs doing research for a book heâs writing that claims that we humans are not the most intelligent species on earth. At best, we come in a distant third .. whales and dolphins are much smarter. In fact, he says jokingly, whales evolved wireless Internet millions of years before Al Gore .. they communicate with each other by sending âsonar messagesâ that can be heard by other whales in any ocean on the planet. Back at the cabin, he shows me 8 by 10 glossy photos of a whaleâs brain. Pretty impressive I say (once he explains what Iâm looking at). They have a much larger, and more convoluted, cerebral cortex than we do. I ask him if thatâs because they have much more body area to control. He says no, very little of it is âmotor cortexâ .. those functions were distributed to areas outside the whaleâs brain a long long time ago. Now humans, he believes, operate from a much lower part of the brain .. whatâs known as the âreptilian brainâ .. and thatâs what drives ourâ rational brainâ .. not the other way around .. as we would like to think. He goes on to tell me that these lower brain areas assign âaddressesâ that link âpowerful emotionsâ to information entering memory. Thatâs why we remember what other people tell us much better than what we read in books. I sit fascinated by all of this. Afterwards, he gives me a book called âUp from Dragonsâ by Dorion Sagan, the son of the late Carl Sagan. I remember reading âDragons of Edenâ in college and was fascinated then too. Gregg has been one of the most interesting parts of this trip. I tell him so the next morning, and we hug before he disappears down highway one. I must remember to send him a copy of âDefending the Cavewomanâ when I get home.