القراءة تقتل القلق، هذا الاستخدام للقراءة جديد من نوعه تماماً بالنسبة لي. إذن سيارة أجرة من المستشفى لبوابة مظلوم سيتي ستارز..مكتبة الشروق..كتابين جديدين..أحدهما جيد جداََ بالنهاية. هذا ال"أحدهما" الجيد يتحدث عن التاريخ الاجتماعي للهستيريا.
وها أنا جالس بجوار الوالدة لا أرفع عيني عن الكتاب، يعتقد من حولي أني أحب القراءة إلا أنني حقيقة في هذه اللحظة فقط أكره القلق.

الهستيريا اضطراب ثابت الحضور على طول التاريخ وعرض الجغرافيا إلا أنه يتغير شكلاً ومسمىََ حسب ثقافة هذا المجتمع أو ذاك. عدم الرضا (الإحباط) والمقاومة للمساعدة ثابتان في كل أشكال الهستيريا. يعتبرهذا نوع من الشكوى السلبية، بمعنى أوضح هي شكوى ليست لطلب المساعدة بل على العكس هي لرفض تلك المساعدة وتحدي فاعليتها.

يناظر هذا الثبات في الاحباط ومقاومة المساعدة بذلك التعامل السلبي بل والنفور في مواجهة الهستيريا من مقدمي المساعدة. لو افترضنا أن تقديم الخدمة الطبية بطارية فمقدمي المساعدة الصحية يرون الهستيريا كتطبيق يستنزف هذه البطارية باستمرار.

أكثر ما يميز هذه الظاهرة هو هذا العنف والعنف المضاد بين صاحب الشكوى ومقدم المساعدة. قد تكون الشكوى تلبس بشيطان أو سحر أو تشنجات أو شلل أو الام مبرحة من جانب وقد يكون مقدم المساعدة شيخاً أو كاهناً أو طبيباً نفسياً أو أخصائياََ اخر.

تاريخياً، كثيراً ما كان الألم الجسدي جزء من العلاج في عدوانية واضحة تجاه الهستيريا. طرد الشيطان بالضرب بالكرباج، الزار، جلسات العلاج بالماء والكهرباء والجراحات المُشوهة للجسد والالات الأشبه بأدوات التعذيب النازية تملأ كتب التاريخ الطبي ومتاحف الطب النفسي. أتذكر وأنا طفل صغير هذا الصديق العابر الذي أخبرني بجدية ووجه متجهم أن "فلانة في بلدهم راكبها جن ولازم أربع شيوخ يضربوا صباع رجلها بالكرابيج لحد أما ينقطع عشان يخرج من خلاله الجن".

هذا العفريت دائماً ما يستعصي على الخروج، يتحدى المشايخ والأطباء سواء.

قديماً في القرنين الثامن عشر والتاسع عشر، ساد الاعتقاد أن هذا الاضطراب لا يصيب سوى أصحاب الطبقة العليا من الأغنياء ذوي الثقافة فكانت الإصابه به تحمل إشاره طبقية مميزة (تماماً مثل النقرص داء الملوك) لكن مع الوقت تبين أنه يصيب الجميع. أشهر من صال وجال مع الهستيريا "جان مارتن شاركو" هذا العبقري الشريرعرض معظم إنجازاته مع الهستيريا خلال عمله بمستشفى بيتيه-سالبيترير والتي كانت ملاذاً للسيدات المشردات الفقراء. ساد أيضاً اعتقاد أنه اضطراب مختص بالنساء إلا أن الأيام والملاحظات أثبتت أن الرجال يتعرضون لأعراض مماثلة وإن كانت بسياقات مختلفة.

الاعتقاد الثقافي بمسببات أو منشأ الهستيريا كان ولا يزال محل جدل، بين أسباب غيبية أو من وراء الطبيعة أو أسباب نفسية المنشأ أو اعتلالات عصبية بيولوجية الأساس. كل مسبب من هؤلاء يحمل في طياته دافعاً اجتماعيا وحتى سياسياً يحرك هذا التفسير أو ذاك. حتى ثقتنا الحالية في الأبحاث الرصينة والعلم الحديث هي بالأساس اجتماعية ثقافية. نحن نرى بوضوح أن هذا الاضطراب يحمل في طياته افتراءات جنسوية Sexist فكلمة هستيريا مشتقة من الاسم اليوناني للرحم نظراً لنظرية بالية تعتقد بارتباطه بالأعضاء الأنثوية. ونحن نتجب القاء أي لوم على صاحب الاضطراب ونقبل فكرة الاضطراب البيولوجي كتفسير مناسب حتى مع تعذر التعرف عليه حتى الان، نحن حتى نستخدم مصطلحات تعكس مسببات بيولوجية مثل الاضطراب العصبي الوظيفي Functional Neurological Disorder كما نتجنب في نفس الوقت التلميح بأي شيء يشير لمسبب من قبيل It’s all in your head وهو اسم الكتاب المشهور ومثير الجدل لطبيبة الأعصاب الإنجليزية Suzanne O’sullivan.

حالياََ يختفى تشخيص الهستيريا تماماً في الممارسة الطبية المعاصرة. نعلم أن كثيراً من ضحايا هذا التشخيص لم يكونوا سوى مرضى لهذا المرض العضوي أو ذاك الذي لم يكن معروفاً قديماً. أيضاً تفتت التشخيص بين مسميات عدة وتراكب مع أمراض أو اضطرابات أخرى. بدأ الدليل التشخيصي والإحصائي للاضطرابات النفسية Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders في العام ١٩٥٢ بقائمة تتضمن ١٠٦ اضطراب نفسي حتى وصلت القائمة لحوالي ٣٠٠ اضراب منفصل في اخر مراجعاته في العام ٢٠٢٢.

أما السبب الأهم في رأيي هو أن محددات المرض وأصنافها هي بالأساس محددات اجتماعية وثقافية، تحديد من هو مريض ومن هو بحاجة للمساعدة تخضع ضمنياً لشروط وبنود العقد الاجتماعي القائم شئنا أم أبينا. حقاً إنه عصر التشخيص The Age of Diagnosis كما تعبر Suzanne O’sullivan في كتابها الأخير والذي لا يزال يثير التأمل والجدل.

أنا وعقلي مجموع ما بداخلي من معلومات وأشخاص وأشياء وأماكن. أحب كثيراً أن أتخيل أن كل أفراد المجتمع تتفاعل جمعياً لانتاج شخص اعتباري وعقلاً جمعياً واحداً. كل منّا يمثل معلومة أو مساراً ما داخل هذا العقل الجمعي. كلما زاد بيننا حضور اتجاه أو مسار ما من المعلومات كلما زادت فرصة وصوله لوعي هذا العقل الجمعي. هذا التخيل يساعدني على فهم الهستيريا كاعتلال عقلي جمعي، لا مشكلة جسدية فردية هنا. الهستيريا مسار لم يتكيف مع كل من حوله ويدفع ما حوله لإعادة ترتيب ما يحدث. الهستيريا اعتراض من نوع "مش لاعب ومحدش هيلعب". هذا العنف والعنف المضاد هو اضطراب مجتمعي يتمثل في صورة اعتلال جسدي كأحد مظاهره.

هاك وصفتي الخاصة لإنتاج الهستيريا..استعداد للإيحاء كما يؤكد هذا العبقري جوزيف بابنسكي وغيره بالإضافة لتعثر اجتماعي ما أو عدم تأقلم مع ما لا يمكن تغييره أو ندبة نفسية لم يمكن التعافي منها واترك هذا كله على نار هادئة من البحث عن مخرج. تقدم باردة هذه المعضلة من اضطراب السعادة المزمن.
لم يعالج الكتاب قلقي بالنهاية لكنه بالتأكيد هون الوقت وزاد من احساسي بالسيطرة على نفسي ومشاعري. ربما هذه طريقة أخرى لتقبل ما لا يمكن تغييره أو التعافي منه..ربما لا علاج لالام الحياة إلا بتقبل المضي فيها قدماً… "لا بأس مع الحياة ولا حياة مع البأس" بحرف الباء كما يقولها محمد أفندي أبوالوفا (أنا) لا بالياء كما فضلها مصطفي باشا كامل.

-Or, more precisely, it takes an integral part. Here is why.

The more established a scientific theory is, the more it reflects on knowledge domains beyond its own paradigm, and the more it generates anomalies for its wider applications. When those anomalies accumulate, they trigger a paradigm shift and spark another scientific revolution. The American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn introduced this concept of scientific revolution in his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

The hard problem of consciousness

Applying an idea from one discipline to another can generate this kind of epistemic motion.

It is interesting to view the easy and hard problems of consciousness, first coined by David Chalmers, through the lens of physics. Carlo Rovelli did this in his recent book On the Equality of All Things. 1

Rovelli argues that we observe reality from within it, and that a disembodied understanding of reality is impossible. After a very good lesson from quantum physics, things are what they are only from their impact/interactions with other things.

He extends such ‘relational reality’ to the concept of consciousness. In this view, consciousness is a relational physical phenomenon between us and other objects, much like every other relational phenomenon in the universe; stars, galaxies and electrons are all alike.

Influenced by Wittgenstein's philosophy, consciousness is a problem we created through language, now a metaphysical problem that is difficult to bridge.

To Rovelli, the hard problem of consciousness is not hard at all; consciousness is there, a relational phenomenon like everything else in the universe.

The point of reference concept: the observer curse

Relational reality, championed by Rovelli, extends the idea that once our knowledge of the universe departed from the Newtonian-mechanics heaven, we lost the concept of a universal observer forever. No universal reference frame can join the whole universe together; there is no universal time or space. Relational reality is a local form of observerhood, or frame of reference; we understand one thing in relation to another. This ‘other thing’ is a point of reference. A reference point need not be a human or a measurement instrument; our minds can grasp a highly abstract notion of an observer: the point of reference.

A trending notion in physics is that we can understand quantum physics better once we strip away the notion of an observer or a measurement instrument (Rovelli himself advocates for it). This notion tries to remove the human mind from quantum interactions, replacing it with any physical object. While this is true, the abstract concept of the ‘point of reference’ operates whether you materialise it as a human mind, a measurement device, or reduce it to its minimum abstract concept of a ‘point of reference’.

For any interacting components in a physical system, there is a need for a meta-cognitive architecture to represent them; this is the concept of ‘frame of reference’.

The mind's ability to understand an independent point of reference is something unique in our mental life. I even strongly believe it is what made us human. If the point of reference is me, then it is ‘consciousness’; if it is other people, then it is ‘theory of the mind ’; and if it is physical objects, then it is ‘physics’ or what I call ‘theory of the object’ in an analogy to theory of the mind.

I explained the concept of ‘theory of the object’ in some detail in this previous article.

Something must serve as a reference point for anything to exist. In relational reality, Rovelli highlights that we need to stop looking for a universal unity or a theory of everything and accept that reality is only relational to a local point of reference (one thing in reference to another).

Referential and non-referential knowledge

In our conscious minds, not every concept requires a point of reference; abstract notions such as justice, love, infinity, and time can be understood independently of one. However, in physical reality, we cannot apprehend anything without a point of reference. The concept of a chair is abstract, but chairs in the physical world require a point of reference.

Concepts without a point of reference are language-driven concepts. Concepts with a point of reference are reality-embodied concepts; interestingly, each type lateralises to one side of the brain, left for language/logic-driven concepts and right for reality testing.

This is once again Wittgenstein’s concept of linguistic confusions: illusions created when we misuse language outside of its practical everyday context.

This negatively toned term, ‘linguistic confusions’, describes the odd occasions when the brain’s information transformation (left-to-right) misfires, but most of the time this left-to-right transformation makes us who we are: human beings with conscious minds.

One interesting, well-recognised theory of consciousness, the ‘Global Neuronal Workspace theory’ (GWT), adapts the idea that consciousness is a platform, or ‘workspace’, where the mind presents and flexibly manipulates information.

Unlike the mainstream GWT, I believe that this workspace concept applies only to the human/human-like conscious-mind. The main advantage of such a workspace- I propose- is to provide information in an exchangeable format between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Only within such a platform can language information be exchanged for visual information. Language capacity and visual-spatial skills are miles-apart networks within the brain; language lives in the left half of the brain for most of us, while visual skills live on the other side of the river, the right half.

This conscious-mind workspace is an unprecedented invention. As the brain got bigger and bigger, transferring information from one side to the other became much more costly in terms of nervous tissue and transfer time. How to solve this? Each half of the brain shares its information with a conscious workspace where it can be exchanged immediately and without a biological cost. Each half of the brain is sharing only the final product of advanced processing, and each has its own standalone conscious experience. This is the core concept of my theory, ‘hemispheric disparity theory’ (HDT), of what I call conscious ‘mind’ experience.

The outcome of such an exchange platform is huge: an animal that surmounted the planet in a blink of evolutionary time.

Few key novel products emerged from the workspace HDT model: the emergence of the sense of self, which mediated the concept of memory of the past (memory of the self-life), and then the greatest invention ever, the concept of Time with a capital T.

Time as we know it is a mind-made concept; ask any fundamental physicist. Physicists describe it as a local, or relational concept. It is local to the observer and linked to the observer: ‘The Self’.

Compared to primates' brains, the human brain is three times bigger, but it grew only in certain parts; much of the brain stayed the same, and even some parts got smaller. It’s compelling to think that the newer parts consumed much more energy, and this makes sense biologically, since these areas are in the cerebral cortex, the most energy-demanding part of the brain. The prefrontal cortex and bits of the temporal and parietal lobes consumed that much extra energy. Responsible for attention, task control and planning, no wonder these mental functions are quite limited, and there is no potential way to increase these cognitive resources directly.

Interestingly, this 25% does not change much with demanding mental effort. Human bodies consume much more energy than those of other primates and mammals. Obviously, humans need much more access to energy for such a fuel-burning machine.

It looks like the brain-body agreement is a win-win deal; I will CEO the energy supply corporation for a big chunk of salary and dividends.

How did the new CEO manage it?

1- An easy answer would be that humans turned omnivores for the first time in primate history, but wait for the next bits

2- Primates and humans developed a much more efficient digestive system

3-Cooking! The discovery of fire was a huge leap: We all know we need to eat fresh fruits and vegetables to keep the water-soluble nutrients that cooking would reduce. This message is over-conveyed just because we live in an overcooking/overcooked culture. Cooking releases the nutrients locked inside tough plant cell walls, and muscle cells. Cooking also predigests food by breaking down collagen and other tough fibres, making nutrients more accessible and digestion less energy-intensive. Homo erectus used fire since 1.5-2 million years ago, but deliberate use dates to 400 thousand years ago, and regular use dates to 125 thousand years ago.

4-Locomotion: we are not the fastest running animals, but we are definitely natural marathon athletes. Prey are faster in the first few minutes, but if you keep hunting for a few hours, they will get tired much before you. Bipedalism uses less energy, frees up the hands, and lets humans master hunting and gathering.

How we eat: Laissez-faire, laissez-passer

The health message of “meat is bad, fresh is good, processed food is bad bad bad” is widely accepted, and there is strong evidence to support it. However, we need to remember that meat is part of what makes us human. If you opt for vegetarianism or veganism, you are mindful that you need to supplement the missing bits; otherwise, it will obviously have repercussions on one’s health. Meat consumption, particularly processed meat, is also linked to cognitive decline.

In my opinion, eating as close to the natural human way as possible is best: a mix of nutrient sources and a mix of cooked and fresh food. We also need this diet for much more locomotion than modern life allows. To keep our brain healthy, we need to keep the energy flow in and out as natural as possible.

I also like to listen to my appetite (not all the time). Every now and then, you find yourself craving one type of food or another. These are likely messages sent from the body/brain that one nutrient is needed for some reason. Many nutrients are unlucky enough not to have a letter (B1, D3, E) or a catchy name (Omega-3). I look after some people with neurological health problems secondary to bariatric surgery or significant rapid weight loss. Often, I check the common nutrition levels, and they're OK, but my patient isn't!

Nature knows well; let do, let pass!

Cognitive Depletion: The Red Queen brain

Borrowing Lewis Carol’s Red Queen, "the brain ‘takes all the running to stay in the same place’. The brain's high energy demand at rest apparently limits further increases in energy consumption from a biological perspective.

Roy Baumeister, an American psychologist, elegantly demonstrated in the book co-authored with John Tierney, “Willpower”, how our cognitive resources are quite limited and vulnerable to what they describe as ‘Ego depletion’.

The authors suggest that all kinds of self-control—like managing emotions, resisting impulses, keeping focus, and breaking habits—come from one shared source of energy. When this energy runs out, it becomes harder to maintain self-regulation afterwards.

Self-regulation and decision-making depend heavily on the newer, most energy-consuming part of the brain: the prefrontal cortex. This idea of ‘ego-depletion’ aligns with the brain's limited capacity to increase energy consumption as cognitive demands rise. 25% of the body's energy is already too much, and the CEO must manage everything within this available share. It is a pity. Baumiester’s ideas did not receive the attention they deserved. Methodological challenges remain in quantifying and objectively measuring the Ego resources that remain to this day.

Numerous brain strategies exist just to conserve energy; the famous book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman is all about how the fast (less energy-demanding) system tries to override the slower, more costly system 2. Most behavioural economics is about identifying the brain's energy shortcuts and psychological strategies, and how to use them or avoid the losses that come from having them in play all the time.

Multitasking does not increase bandwidth; we are already on an energy-saving plan, with no slack or redundancy. Multitasking always compromises accuracy and efficiency in the tasks involved. A biological, energy-driven wall is hard to surmount, even with training, and the best thing to do is keep studying to understand it better.

Continuing to work in your job adds more experience, efficiency, and better outcomes. If you wake up in the morning and decide to abandon your previous work and start again from scratch, you risk devaluing all the time you've already spent in the job. Sometimes this works very well from a Queen’s Gambit perspective; most of the time, it is a very painful loss/risk that all of us avoid.

If you spent the whole day installing your IKEA shelves and desk, you tend to preserve that effort by using them well and sticking with those furniture sets. Michael Norton, Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely outlined the term IKEA Effect in a paper study of the same name.

The famous Sunk Cost is a classic concept in behavioural economics that describes how our behaviour is influenced by money, time, or effort we have already spent and cannot get back.

The IKEA effect and sunk cost are typically described as cognitive biases in behavioural economics. This suggests a skewed perception of reality. An alternative view is that attempting to reshape the future through current actions can also be viewed as a creative way to update our mental models of reality, primarily for survival.

Universally, life in the here and now adds value to all previous life. We are alive today thanks to all those who lived before us, and our lives gain more value when we pass this life's potential to the next generations.

Whether you are a fan of Japanese manga and anime, Attack on Titan, it will remain one of the most well-said words by Commander Erwin Smith:

‘Would you say that of our slain comrades? What about their lives? Were they meaningless? They were NOT! Their memory serves as an example to us all! The courageous fallen! The anguished fallen!
Their lives have meaning because we, the living, refuse to forget them! And as we ride to certain death, we trust our successors to do the same for us!’

When it comes to basic needs, it is poverty; broadly speaking, though, we're all poor in one way or another, be it economic (your money), social (your connections), or cultural (your education and skill set). Other resources also affect our day-to-day but aren't described in ‘Capital’ terms, such as time (I presume Elon Musk and Trump might be much poorer in this capital than you and me) and social life. Anything useful and limited is a ‘Capital’ and can be scarce or abundant.

This fantastic book, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, by behavioural economist Sendhil Mullainathan and psychologist Eldar Shafir highlights another domain of scarcity, which they call the ‘scarcity mindset’.

The Scarcity trap

Our minds respond to scarcity by trying to improve the utility of what is available. Numerous psychology studies show, for example, that your shooting accuracy is better when you have limited darts to shoot than with unlimited attempts. Copy and paste this pattern to every resource we have- money, time, and relationships. The pattern just keeps showing up. Bees use space much more elegantly to build their beehives than wasps; mud is much more abundant than wax. This is a universal pattern!

This works well for short-term, immediate problems, but the authors brilliantly illustrate the drastic consequences of being trapped in this mindset for long. We have limited cognive resources, and if you spend more to focus on improved utility, this heavily taxes your performance outside the focus of attention. If you don’t have enough money or time capacity, this might continue for a long time, and so are your heavily taxed cognitive resources. The sense of scarcity is inescapable; the mind is constantly drained by micromanaging enhanced utility all the time.

The cognitive Capital concept

We may vary in money or time availability, but we all have limited cognitive capacity.

The human brain consumes around 25% of the body's energy at all times. This is huge for an organ that is only 3% of our body weight. Still huge compared to chimps or other primates (7-9%) and non-primate mammals (3-5%).

Not every single part of the human brain got bigger; many parts stayed the same size as in other primates, and some parts even got smaller. This surging energy demand came from our big frontal lobes, the prefrontal cortex. From a biological perspective, the cognitive resources involved in focusing, planning, and synthesising our sense of time are quite limited.
No matter your IQ or educational attainment, we all suffer a scarcity of our cognitive capital at all times. Numerous studies show that focusing and tunnelling due to such scarcity trap limits both fluid intelligence resources and executive functions.

Improving Cognitive scarcity

I genuinely dislike the self-help tone, whether reading or speaking about it, but sometimes it is good to try to use one particular understanding or another. Below is what I preach to myself while living in extreme cognitive scarcity.

If the supply/demand balance is off, you can either increase supply or decrease demand.

Increase the supply:

Sorry to disappoint, but no single medication or exercise unequivocally increases your raw cognitive resources. But there are effective tricks we all do, and one can make better use of them once you put them in front of your eyes.

• Experience: with education, learning and repeated exposure, we improve our crystallised intelligence, so in the end you can do the same task faster and more efficiently. If something takes up much of your time, maybe you need to do it more often.

• Team play (Distributed cognition): a problem shared is a problem halved; sometimes you can let other people think and focus for you. Teamwork is a survival skill; sometimes we are too unconfident to hand off tasks, so we keep doing everything ourselves. If it is crazy to keep it moving, maybe you need more monkeys on the tree instead of playing the lone-wolf game.

• Cognitive Offloading via Technology: Using computers and Artificial intelligence is self-explanatory, I think.

Decrease the demand:

For me, this is the root problem. We always need more because we would like to do more. Sometimes letting it go is the best way to survive. According to the book authors above, having slack or some redundancy in your resources is the most effective strategy against the scarcity trap. If you are limited, you have to choose, but if you are in an abundance position, you don’t have to choose at all. Decreasing the demand makes room for what needs to be done.

• Multitasking is a curse: We need to do many things at the same time; multitasking is, again, one example of how time scarcity makes us perform poorly across the multiple tasks we handle at once.

• Accept the pain: Don't try to fill boring driving time with other stuff to make it more enjoyable. You need to let go of the joy.

• Anti-Tech tricks: Technology can let you do more, but it can also fill you with more demands. Telephone calls, remote meetings, and even emails let you do more in less time, but they rob your mind. Being in two places at once is a huge cognitive load. Our minds model the person we only hear their voice over the phone, their emotions, and their reactions; we also model the connection, its quality, its lag, and its duration. Too much is happening in a simple telephone call. Technology lets you do more, but with lower quality and a huge tax, and the final outcome isn't always as time-saving as we hope.

• Timetables and plans (Externalising working memory): When you materialise a plan or timetable, you offload the unconscious handling and tracking that our cognitive resources otherwise keep. If you just write it down, it literally puts the mind at rest. Paying a pending bill, finishing an open application, and reaching an agreement on an unsettled issue are just a few examples.

• Living in the here and now: When you have a task to do, make it the here and now for the moment; try not to worry about what comes after or overthink what came before. You can get back to them later.

• Let it go: Our expectations about ourselves and expectations from others always trap us in high demand. Sometimes letting go of these expectations, goals, hopes and dreams makes our life immediately happier. Letting go may mean accepting that it may not happen or may end with an alternative outcome. Jimmy Carr once said, “Happiness = Expectation - reality”, probably quoting Mo Gawdat, a former Google [X] executive, in his 2017 book ‘Solve for Happy’.

  But Hobbes below is the most inspiring in this matter.

Dual-wielding swordsmen are highly symbolic of strength, but on the battlefield, almost no one does it. Historical exceptions do exist: Khalid ibn al-Walid, a highly successful military commander during the early Muslim conquests; the Dimachaerus, a specialised class of Roman gladiator; and later, prominent Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645), who developed Niten Ichi-ryū, a distinctive school of swordsmanship utilising a long sword (katana) and a short sword (wakizashi) simultaneously.

In theory, operating two independent weapons offers a distinct offensive advantage. In practice, the relative scarcity of this fighting style highlights fundamental constraints within the central nervous system, namely interference and performance drop with multitasking.

Most everyday movements require some degree of collaboration between the hands.

We have two different classes of bimanual use. The simple rhythmic class is easy; for example, we use our hands simultaneously when pushing a large box, or when we swing our arms in opposite directions while walking or even dancing.

Level two bimanual tasks are way different; they need an invariant, goal-directed task, better yet, even be visually guided. Both hands are performing complementary motor functions that ultimately serve the abstract goal of our behaviour. Opening a bottle, sewing, playing a musical instrument, and buttoning a shirt are all straightforward examples. For these tasks to happen, class one rhythmic movement must be suppressed to make space for higher, goal-directed right-left coordination.

Animals with a larger prefrontal cortex (primates, including humans) have this part of the brain developed to support that hand-eye-mouth coordination. Arms are out of timing and phase-of-movement synchrony for bipedal animals, in contrast to the legs or all quadrupedal animals. Each arm can act in a complex way on its own, but one problem remains: our eyes are not divided; our spatial attention stays unified, so each hand cannot work independently because our visual guidance cannot be split. Even if you are ambidextrous, you can’t split your attention or vision without a terrible compromise to cognitive power. If you think about it again, it is never a smart idea at all for both hands to do the same task.

One fundamental concept in both neuroscience and physics is “the observer”.

In neuroscience, the observer is the conscious agent— a biological entity capable of interoception and memory. In physics, the observer is an abstract notion of a physical system or a frame of reference: a set of space-time coordinates relative to a real or arbitrary measurement entity. The relationship between the observer concept and the concept of time reveals profound intersections between these disciplines.

Time is not a fundamental fabric of the universe (Time is not out there)

Our basic idea of the universe as a one vast space containing innumerable objects, with us living within it, is described as universal spacetime or Newtonian time. In this Newtonian model, time flows uniformly in one direction through every part of the universe and for every observer.

General relativity challenged this view in the early twentieth century. It demonstrated that simultaneity and temporal intervals are strictly relative to the observer’s inertial frame of reference. This decentralised the monolithic “universe” concept, replacing it with a reality where space and time are local and relative. While human cognition can partially visualise spatial relativity—picturing objects shrinking or stretching via space contraction and dilation—the absence of a universal time remains deeply counterintuitive.

Quantum mechanics further dismantles the notion of a universal background time and universal observerhood. Quantum physics generally does not treat time as a fundamental dimension; time emerges only from an entanglement process between two local systems within the universe (The problem of time).

Carlo Rovelli and many others deny the existence of time at the deepest fundamental level of the universe, at least its flow or the dynamic theory of time.

Time is a fabric of conscious experience, not the universe (Time is in here)

I tried, in my personal view on the human conscious mind, “the hemispheric disparity theory” to explain how the dual overlapping conscious experience- the embodied self and the agentic self, both contribute to a unique dynamic model of self. The dynamic component of the experienced self relates to how the sense of presence (embodied self) is sequentially linked: an event of presence after another (agent). We consolidate this dynamic model in a special form of memory, autobiographic memory, and within such experience we can appreciate the abstract sense of a timeline and the flow of time.

But within the human mind, time is never a completely abstract notion and can never stand-alone without an observer (Agent) anchoring it.

“Time is incomplete until it is seen”

Our sense of self as conscious agents is linked to the sense of time; you can feel conscious even if you confuse your sense of space, but you never recall a conscious experience when you confuse your sense of time. The reportable part of our conscious experience, the sense of agency, generates our sense of time, and there is no meaning for one without the other.

This even extends to the “ theory of mind” concept in psychology. We cannot imagine agentic life without time. Projecting the sense of self onto others as conscious agents also attributes a fabric of “subject-time”.

Theory of object and objecthood

In his book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, neuroscientist Anil Seth describes objecthood as the brain-constructed perceptual experience that an item—like a coffee cup on a desk—is a stable, three-dimensional entity existing independently out in the world. Our mind can then attribute rules governing such objects; these are simply our expectations of how they would behave under the laws of physics. In the predictive processing framework adopted by Seth and many others, the object and its governing rules are a model inside our minds, continuously updated and refined.

Theory of mind is a form of predictive processing about others' minds, and consciousness itself can be viewed as a predictive processing framework for our own perceived selves.

I propose that one fascinating property of the mind is our ability to extend the theory of mind concept to inanimate physical objects. Let’s call it the theory of object, in an analogy to the theory of mind.

I define theory of object as the ability to view objects as having their own space and time as much as I have a space and time experience.

Physical objects are “inanimate subjects” governed by a set of rules. The similarity between other “objects” and other “subjects/minds” is their independent existence out in the world, just like me. I am a mind of my own (cogito ergo sum), and so do other people around me (theory of the mind). Also, I am an object of my own, and so do other objects in the world around me (theory of object).

Only when our minds generated this unprecedented tweak were we able to acquire some knowledge about the world, an epistemology. This tweak, though, left a vestige: the concept of time, still embedded in any knowledge about any object in this universe.

In physics, if you take the time away, you take the observer away

To appreciate any object's independent presence, being a planet, an apple, or a fundamental quantum particle, our minds can never do this without attributing the object’s own sense of time. To our minds, the imagined observer is the very planet, the apple or the particle.

The observer and time are of the same fabric. Imagining one without the other is mind-twisting. Physics, as a form of knowledge, cannot override such an axiom.

If I can imagine that time passes uniformly in this universe whether I am observing it or not, it is because I am attributing, through a “theory of mind” process, a universal frame of reference that the universe exists with/within: Newtonian time and the universe. An observing God, if you wish. Let’s call this a Newtonian God.

It is difficult to imagine a relativity- or quantum-physics God. There is no such single universal observer (relativity), or no observer altogether (quantum physics)*.

You can still attribute an observer to a measurement instrument, a relativistic frame of reference or a quantum entanglement state. This is just an exercise in the “theory of object” discussed above, but an observer must exist anyway.

Physics posits the idea that time is not universal, and I suggest here that neuroscience posits that time is not out there; rather, it is within our conscious minds.

Finally, does time really exist? Yes, but not independently. We have to bear its weight in our minds all the time for it to exist.

*As a muslim believer, I need to highlight how Muslim theologians solved the problem of time. Muslim scholars see god “above time”; they use the term “ancient” to mean “eternal” or outside time. The universe is described as “Event-prone” or “Ha’dith”, an Arabic word that I cannot find a relevant translation for, but what is fascinating about it is that it is linked to “Events”, which is what everyone agrees on when we speak of time. Physicists, neuroscientists, and many philosophers agree that time is “event-occurrence,”. Different notions of time are ways to generate an abstract form of event-occurrence.

Invincibility fable describes how young people feel that ill-health and bad things only happen to other people.

This cognitive distortion, which we all share, stems from egocentrism that emerges in childhood and persists in all of us in adulthood: “optimism bias”, to varying degrees.

If you feel good about yourself all the time, then the black swan moment of immediate arm numbness, or high blood sugar and diabetes, for example, is disturbing to your mental model of yourself.

Once a black swan health event happens, one usually asks the doctor for the outcome, not the facts. Doctors can know with reasonable certainty what has happened, but that certainty doesn't carry over to the main question: what is happening next.

This uncertain tone of voice of true science traps both the patient and the doctor. I do not care if my insulin islet cells in my pancreas were damaged by overeating or some antibodies; I care about whether I will have neuropathy and painful feet next year or not, and whether I will lose my retina to a retinal haemorrhage or not. All these questions come with the same answer, “maybe, maybe not”.

Sometimes our minds succumb to a false tone of certainty, leaving the genuine true answer of indeterminacy. This is not because we are idiots; it is because we can accept, digest, cope with, and recover from life's adversities and misfortunes only with models of clarity and certainty.

Doctors are pressured to put on a mask when reciting their statistical figures or trial studies: the mask of the fortune-tellers.

Many people have missed the correct way to find this fortune teller or that wizard. It’s important to remember that this isn’t due to ignorance or low IQ — the human mind craves certainty, and it is for a good reason.

This mammalian device, the hippocampus, maps the space around us and, more precisely, our navigation through it. Our brains are equipped not only with mapping abilities, but also with a drive to create and continuously update these maps. This relentless drive to learn through navigation is largely neglected and rightly described as an instinct. It is a cognitive instinct that we can't help stopping. This is the same instinct that social media platforms manipulate, ending up enslaving us within infinite scrolling. Doomscrolling!

In one of the most fascinating books about how we learn, Drive, Daniel Pink describes how curiosity creates a richer, more sustainable learning experience than incentivised learning (reward and punishment). Rhesus monkeys left to fiddle with a simple toy puzzle mastered how to solve it much more easily than through incentivised success-and-failure trials. Of course, this is well seen and described in humans, both within psychology experiments and in the world around us.

Far more interesting, the larger part of the private screen and specifically the human brain, the prefrontal cortex, is part of a brain dedicated primarily to coordinating the navigating triad of hand, eye and mouth. The human brain is an acceleration machine for the immediate environment (hands) and the distant environment (eyes).

Like any other instinct, you can't stop the flow of curiosity and passion; you can only partially control the direction.

Losing passion is losing part of life!

It is clear to everyone working in neuroscience that there is no centre or network that regulates the perception of time.

If it is a function emerging from an overall distributed orchestration of the brain, then a different brain necessarily implies a different perception of time.

I strongly believe this is the case.

The hippocampus is known for encoding space; this has been classically demonstrated through hippocampal place cells in the pioneering work of John O’Keefe and Jonathan Dostrovsky in the seventies.

There is one puzzling fact about the hippocampus: it is the place for long-term memory; it is also the place for specialised mapping and modelling of the world, and at the same time it is a place where we start to lose our sense of time and time-tracking in Alzheimer’s.

People who have Alzheimer’s short-term memory difficulties are not just losing memory of places or people; they are losing the ability to make sense of and order of “time”.

Hippocampus models/Maps events and, on an abstract level, organises events or simply the timeline. In Alzheimer’s cases, you lose the landmarks if you can’t plot them on a map.

Such time mapping is never abstract; it is always a referential mapping. There is always a point of reference in time, and if it does not exist, time is meaningless.

This fact has been well known since the introduction of the theory of relativity. Time makes sense only relative to the observer.

The Newtonian Universal time assumes there is a Universal point of reference (observer) to which you can refer everything that happens in the universe. Now we understand that this is not the case, but to interpret and appreciate any meaning of time, you need a frame of reference to work within.

The abstract notion of time lies at the heart of our conscious experience as observing agents.

Time as we feel and refer to it is uniquely human-specific. A quantified, controlled, and shared illusion.