Corpus callosum of the global brain?

Are the UN and the International Community both Brain Dead (Part #4)

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Literature on the global brain as a model tends to avoid reference to the hemispheric integration, better framed through the metaphor of a global brain. Chris Woodford, for example, makes only the briefest of reference to the role of the corpus callosum (The Internet and the Brain, Explain that Stuff, 2014). As noted by Wikipedia:

The corpus callosum (from Latin: "tough body"), also known as the callosal commissure, is a wide, flat bundle of neural fibers beneath the cortex in the eutherian brain at the longitudinal fissure. It connects the left and right cerebral hemispheres and facilitates interhemispheric communication. It is the largest white matter structure in the brain, consisting of 200-250 million contralateral axonal projections.

Each hemisphere is divided into regions called lobes, understood to play different roles with respect to human behaviour. With respect to hemispheric specialization, the lobes of the brain are variously distinguished as numbering four, six and eight. The cerebral cortex is divided up into four lobes, however, more specifically, each lobe has a right and left side, making eight. They include:

• Frontal lobe: conscious thought; damage can result in mood changes, social differences, etc. The frontal lobes are the most uniquely human of all the brain structures.
• Parietal lobe: plays important roles in integrating sensory information from various senses, and in the manipulation of objects; portions of the parietal lobe are involved with visuospatial processing
• Occipital lobe: sense of sight; lesions can produce hallucinations
• Temporal lobe: senses of smell and sound, as well as processing of complex stimuli like faces and scenes.
• Limbic lobe: emotion, memory
• Insular cortex: pain, some other senses.

It might be asked what "lobes" are distinguished from a cybernetic understanding of the operation of the world wide web -- given the importance of the above functions with respect to collective consciousness. Some specific consideration of an analogue to the corpus callosum is given by Takeshi Utsumi (Quest for Global Peace, International Journal of Humanities and Peace, 17, 2001, 1) in terms of a "Rainbow Bridge Across the Pacific".

What seems to be extraordinary, given the problematic integrative function of the world wide web, is the lack of attention to the extensive work by neuroscience on any dysfunction of the corpus callosum or indeed to its absence (J. Michael Tyszka1, et al, Intact Bilateral Resting-State Networks in the Absence of the Corpus Callosum, The Journal of Neuroscience, 2011; Audrey Benezit, Organising white matter in a brain without corpus callosum fibres, Cortex, 09/2014). Such absence, known as corpus callosum dysgenesis (CCD), might well characterize global civilization at this time.

A valuable question is raised by Michael S. Gazzaniga (Cerebral specialization and interhemispheric communication: does the corpus callosum enable the human condition? Brain, 2000,; reviewed by Patricia Ann Reuter-Lorenz, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Mind: a tribute to Michael S. Gazzaniga, 2010). He frames the question as follows:

When this is considered in the light of new studies on the lateralization of functions, it becomes reasonable to suppose that the corpus callosum has enabled the development of the many specialized systems by allowing the reworking of existing cortical areas while preserving existing functions. Thus, while language emerged in the left hemisphere at the cost of pre-existing perceptual systems, the critical features of the bilaterally present perceptual system were spared in the opposite half-brain. By having the callosum serve as the great communication link between redundant systems, a pre-existing system could be jettisoned as new functions as new functions developed in one hemisphere, while the other hemisphere could continue to perform the previous functions for both perceptual and cognitive processes, the lateralization of half-brains.

If global civilization is vulnerable to crisis, as seems only too evident, what effort is made to learn learn from the neurosciences as a consequences of any injury? This is explored, in the case of the brain, by David J. Sharp, Gregory Scott and Robert Leech (Network Dysfunction after Traumatic Brain Iinjury, Nature Reviews Neurology, 2014). Arguably their perspective with regard to traumatic brain injury (TBI) is highly relevant to any understanding of the consciousness of global civilization at this time:

Damage to the structural connectivity of these networks produces predictable abnormalities of network function and cognitive control. For example, the brain normally shows a 'small-world architecture' that is optimized for information processing, but TBI shifts network function away from this organization. The effects of TBI on network function are likely to be complex, and we discuss how advanced approaches to modelling brain dynamics can provide insights into the network dysfunction.

Given the much-challenged present capacity to learn from history, any form of collective TBI could be related to effects on collective memory, as separately argued (Societal Learning and the Erosion of Collective Memory, 1980; Pointers to the Pathology of Collective Memory, 1980).

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