Neuromythography

The Architecture of the Soul

Neuromythography Introduction For Scientists

If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.

Ludwig wittgenstein

The Neuromythograph is, at the end of the day, a knowledgebase.

It is a proprietary catalog of more than 925 brain areas, and more than 280 neurotransmitters and receptors, organized into multiple ontologies, integrated into a kind of database called a graph database. The brain areas have more than 19,000 interconnections, including parent-child relations, neighbor relations, distal entrances, distal exits, functional connectivity, and thalamic connectivity. It is comparable in size to authoritative neuroscience databases that have been constructed by many experts over a period of years (such as Neuronames, Brain Architecture Management System (BAMS), and Neurosynth). In contrast to the technologically-sophisticated methods used in those projects, I have personally hand-curated the entire Neuromythograph from thousands of sources, using methods I developed through trial-and-error, without the use of any automated text extraction algorithms. It was a lot of work, but I find the assembled puzzle pieces aesthetically pleasing. It makes rich neuroscience knowledge accessible to non-specialists and experts alike. I call this new field of study neuromythography, and I hope that others can begin to find hidden pearls in it too.

The unique contribution I have made is assigning archetypal interpretations to each biological entity, to propose connections between the spiritual, mental and biological realms.

Background

Note: a more complete history of the brain mapping that led to neuromythography can be found here.

In 2016, Glasser, van Essen et al published a reference brain map (Glasser parcellation) that attempted to reconcile all previous efforts to map the neocortex using the new Human Connectome Project fMRI dataset. This dataset was created by the same lab at the University of Washington, St. Louis under a grant from US NIH during the Obama administration. It was hailed at the time as a “scientific tour de force”, which is not an exaggeration. This part-automated, part-manually-constructed method resulted in a cortical map containing 180 areas per hemisphere, or 360 for the entire neocortex. This scientific advance made the Neuromythograph possible, because it provides a replicable, detailed reference map that can be applied to any human brain fMRI scan.

Prosomeric model of Puelles, that supersedes the neuroanatomy taught in textbooks for the past hundred years.

The brain areas in the Neuromythograph are organized into zones and progenitor sectors based on the the prosomeric development model of University of Murcia (Spain) neuroscientist Luis Puelles and his collaborators. This model, which is based on the understanding of ontogenic signaling markers that has developed in the 21st century, is starting to displace the older columnar model based on anatomical landmarks that has been taught in universities for many years. Whereas the HCP project represented an accomplishment of “big science”, the prosomeric model was largely constructed by the impressive research synthesis of Puelles himself.

A sample plate of the Allen Brain Institute model of the human brain.

The Allen Brain Atlas, an output of a privately-funded research foundation, provides the subcortical model, completing the brain model of the Neuromythograph. Many additional brain areas were incorporated from various studies, and databases such as the Brain Architecture Management System (BAMS).

Each of the Neuromythograph entities is linked to a growing collection of about 5000 supporting neuroscience references, each tagged using a custom metadata model, and curated via a bespoke high-throughput manual review process that has churned through an estimated 30,000 neuroscience papers over the past five years. Rather than using the conventional footnoting of proper scholarship, the references are directly linked to the graph nodes themselves, facilitating direct exploration of the literature around a biological, social, or spiritual concept. The Neuromythography has an ontology spanning across spirituality, humanities, psychology, relationships, social science, and other topics. I have cast a wide, high-throughput net across the literature, rapidly panning for gold, and attaching new puzzle pieces into my kintsugi art.

Archetypal Neuroscience

Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.

— Richard Feynman

So far in my description, this is just an elaborate catalog consolidation exercise. The unique contribution I have made is assigning archetypal characters to interpret each biological entity, to identify connections between the spiritual, mental, and biological worlds. This was inspired by inspired by Jungian psychoanalysis, the prevalence of polytheistic world religions, the dissolution of the mind into multiple personalities in dissociative disorders, and Marvin Minsky’s The Society of Mind.

In constructing these archetypal characters, I have drawn from the vast heritage of Biblical, Greek, Roman, Hindu, Buddhist, African, and other traditions. I have extended my mythographic sources to scientists, mathematicians, computer scientists, philosophers, and even Disney characters, to attempt to interpret the gestalt personality of the biological entity as best I can discern from the literature. Once you get past the initial incredulity and fear that a very serious person is going to judge you for taking such allegory seriously, the clouds part and understanding shines through.

Neuromythography starts with a cosmogony that mythologizes vertebrate embryological development. Starting from fertilization and subsequent differentiation into ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm, the neuromythographic cosmogony maps in uncannily close sympathy to the Greek poet Hesiod’s great work of Greek mythology, Theogony. From there it traces the development of the primordial Sectors and Zones, faithfully mythologizing the prosomeric model of Puelles. This provides a simplified top-down hierarchical structure that organizes the more than 900 individual brain areas.

The merely fantastic has only minor power.

I lack the imaginary world creation prowess of Tolkien, Lucas, and Stapledon, so I used the real world of neuromeres and neural plates instead. The story I am telling is that of nature. As I have information modeling skills and the subject area is so vast and interconnected, my creation medium is the networked data structure rather than the linear formula of the book.

These brain areas form a set of interconnected caverns that can be interactively explored by the user, inspired by the allegorical characters living on asteroids in Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. The idea is to be able to walk through the characters in your own mind, engage in dialog with them, understand how they talk to each other and form communities, and to understand the kinds of energies that they respond to. Using the Neuromythopedia interface, one can freely navigate between the world of Knowledge to the spiritual underworld of the Neuromythograph, and back. This is the “killer app” that I am seeking resources and collaborators to complete.

There are more applications for neuromythography, and I envision building an ecosystem around it. Appending neuromythographic labels to fMRI scans to provide descriptive interpretations. A biologically-inspired architectural framework for advanced artificial intelligences. A mineable resource for artists creating stories. New self-help and corporate consulting methodologies. I don’t know what creative spirits will do with the resource, but I want to provide them the cricket flour to create their own applications.

An Invitation to Neuromythography

The general neuromythography information model, with the four main perspectives labeled (Seeker, Neuromythographer, Neuroscientist, and Anagogist). The Neuromythograph is the hub that bridges the World of Man with the World of the Infinite.

I created neuromythography because I saw the opportunity that the Human Connectome Project-based Glasser parcellation opened up. Neuroscience had finally produced a cortical reference map at a sufficient resolution to provide cortical modular puzzle pieces that could be fitted together. I felt a calling, a sense of finally knowing what I wanted my alchemical ‘Magnum Opus’ to be. I developed new research methods appropriate to the task, and through hours of training I have developed the skill to quickly eyeball fMRI images and mentally map them to the archetypal parcellation of the Neuromythograph.

This iterative archetypal interpretation of the brain is an ongoing activity, and the neuroanatomy has by no means been entirely interpreted. I have made many silly errors along the way, and changed my mind a lot as the facts changed. The Greek goddess Hecate was repeatedly relocated throughout the brain until she finally found a home in the estrogen story. There is no rabbit up my sleeve.

My vision is for neuromythography to create a schism between neuroscience and research psychology, to create a bridge between neuroscience and spirituality, and to replace social science reifications with archetypal personifications grounded in neuroscience.