Three times now this week, I’ve reached into a cupboard to get the honey I bought last weekend, bulk honey from the store in a generic 500 mL disposable plastic container. All three times I realized I found myself in the wrong cupboard. I was reaching for a container of frying oil that we used once and filtered to use again.
See, normally we have a smaller thing of honey from some fancy-schmancy local producer in a place we went on a trip. This time though we were out of honey and needed it to make something, so I just got the cheapest kind from the store.
Fascinating, right? Don’t worry, I’m telling you this for a reason.
The third time it happened, because I happened to be rereading something he wrote to see if it would be good for my class, I thought of a conversation I had with my friend Bruce Balentine. We had dinner last summer when he was nearby visiting his daughter. His granddaughter was with us (brave, considering it was a sushi place), and he was talking about it being fascinating on this little trip with her to have lots of time to pay attention to how she’s paying attention to things. Old enough to stand upright and talk pretty well, but not old enough to have a well-formed and general feel for the world at large, Bruce said he can see her conceptual world forming virtually before his eyes.
One of those concepts he mentioned that was new to me was re-entry. He hypothesized that for new but not yet fully-formed abilities – say, to anticipate how things will move by how heavy they are – he could see the surface-level presentation of her experiencing re-entry by observing her behavior. How she would let a ball start rolling tentatively, and then do it again and again with more confidence until it was mastered, then move on to another thing. The next day, she would still start off tentatively, but a little less so, and move through the process a little quicker and go a little further. The next day, with a different ball, or a grapefruit, and moving through the process more surely and quickly than the last. And so on.
So what’s re-entry? Well, it’s new to me too, and all I’ve taken in is a video of one of the hypothesizers of the idea, Gerald Edelman, and then a wiki page to gauge how widespread the idea is. And I’m no expert on neurology or neural processing theory, but I’ll guess your grasp is as much as mine is.
The general idea is this, and apologies in advance to the neurobiologists reading this: The left and right halves of your brain are connected in a very redundant way. To a large degree the activity and pathways for the core functional modules of the mind are mirrored on both sides, a dynamic process that’s constantly synchronized (epilepsy, it’s thought, is what happens when the electrical part of this process gets out of sync and stuck in a feedback loop). Re-entry happens when new information about an neural node is sent from one side to the other.
The thing is, the mirroring isn’t exact. In Edelman’s theory, the connections between two nodes mirrored are constantly exchanging information about what’s new or changed, and the frequency of exchange more or less is consistent with the importance of the information. The more connections between the same nodes, the more powerful that information is. More or less classic neural network theory – the more and the stronger the connections, the more likely it is to surface.
His emphasis though, is on the difference between the nodes exchanging information. The information exchanged is always different in a significant way is the key to structures mirroring. Not much different. Just a little. The nodes must remain functionally equivalent (this being the point of redundancy), but it’s okay if they’re a tiny bit different from each other, just as changing your socks does’t make your shoes not fit or your feet change size. Significantly different enough, though, that the emergent difference is noticeable, and meaningful.
He uses the metaphor of evolutionary biology, but I like to avoid that topic. His note of immunology I think was more interesting anyway. The ability of cells to create many different variants of antibodies is timely, here in the time of COVID-19. When your body is freaking out about a virus, cells generate uncountable variants of a given core antibody structure. Many copies of similar but distinct genetic information. Then, as your body responds to the virus, these antibodies attempt to bind with the foreign virus.
For the antibodies that bind successfully with a foreign body, an instruction is sent: start making a shitload more of them, since there’s evidence of them possibly successfully fighting off hostile intruders. This feedback loop is repeated until a small set of antibodies that successfully bind is identified, which are then replicated en masse, and ta da, you now have immunity to a given virus.
Back to my pantry. It just so happens that on the same day, I introduced two similarly-shaped containers of golden liquid to the cupboard above the stove. The honey is on the left, with the vinegars and oils and nut butters, but maybe since it’s sweet, I open the cupboard on the right, where the sugar and other baking stuff is, which just happens to be where we keep neutral oil for frying (and baking).
The first time, I got as far as picking up the oil, even though as I was looking at it the color seemed way too light for honey. The second time, my hand touched the container, but it was not until my fingers touched the container and I saw the liquid move in a way it shouldn’t have that I stopped myself. Just now, I opened the cupboard, saw the wrong color for honey, and remembered where it was without reaching.
Is this re-entry? All three times, learning a new pathway (there is honey in the cupboard, but keep your eyes peeled, it’s in a weird package), all three times using visual processing as an aid (golden is directionally right), but the last two times, using an observation on the incorrectness of the color as well (that’s too light for honey), which creates a new pathway, remember that the honey is on the left.
The interesting thing about the behaviors and the information is that they’re emergent. Despite what you may think about people who write this much about getting food out of cupboards, I don’t actually pay very much attention to what’s in them at all. Normally I remember where things are and don’t even have to look. Olive oil’s on the lower left. Extra kosher salt all the way at the top far left behind the pasta, and so on.
Just now, since I started this draft earlier, I opened the cupboard to get something else, and saw the oil. A further reminder. Does that make a reinforcement of the pathway of which is which, perhaps just a bit weaker, as it’s not task critical and a peripheral or secondary piece of information?
Is it ridiculous to pay so much goddam attention to where a foodstuff is stored? Am I giving ample evidence to the world that I’m a little off, or maybe that COVID-based homegoing is getting to me?
Maybe.
Still, we change our minds one percept at a time. And aren’t aware of the large majority of things our brains do, so it’s a compelling metaphor. Crappy science to observe and report so indirectly and haphazardly as this, sure, but hey, I’m doing science just reaching for the honey! Gimme a break!