Does it seem normal to you that a Galician woman is the director of the visual neuroscience laboratory that bears her name at the Barrow Neurological Institute, in Phoenix, Arizona? It is true that near there I also met, many years ago, one of the greatest neurologists of our time, Antonio Damasio, of Portuguese origin and inventor of the phrase (not “I think, therefore I exist” -that was invented by Descartes-, but quite the opposite): “I exist, therefore I think”.
Martínez-Conde , that is the name of the American laboratory that I mentioned at the beginning, has specialized in detecting the neurobiological traces that magicians follow, unconsciously. Susana is not surprised, of course, that magic has preceded science. All the illusionists who have been in the world are known; without noticing, like other mortals, the tricks and traps performed by them, despite knowing in detail the neural reflexes on which they are based, without them knowing it.
Susana has taught me one of the three or four things that I am going to try to transmit to my granddaughters when they ask me -before my atoms disintegrate- not to take to my grave the most important of all the nonsense that I have learned in more than seventy years. Susana is full of science and magic everywhere; Its level of asymmetric fluctuations is clearly below average and perhaps because of this – or despite it – it can convey truths to you like a temple without giving itself any importance.
I was able to extract one of these four truths because, when we met, I was by chance delving into why young ninis – who neither study nor work – are the way they are and not otherwise. I had said to myself “Eduardo, it is not possible that, with everything that the irruption of science in popular culture is suggesting to us today, you are unable to offer the ninis something that serves them; instead of insult or contempt. There must be something scientifically founded that they can grasp to improve or explain their situation. “
As well; That something was given to me by Susana Martínez-Conde and I would like to pass it on as is to my granddaughters and the ninis.The border between blindness and vision when someone looks at a stationary object is outlined by movement, the intense action of unconscious ocular meanders, the impact of what they call microsaccades that correlate with structures of neural activity. Unlike us, frogs do not perceive a lone fly attached to the wall, unless it moves. The same can happen to some NEETs by dint of neither moving nor studying nor working.If there is no action, if there is no movement – even if it is tiny or micro, Susana taught me – the brain shrinks, the hippocampus shrinks, the body shrinks.
Thank you, Susana, for making me see – just when I was thinking of reducing my activity levels – that“Quiet stop” is the ideal recipe to avoid seeing the unemployed, in the same way that the frog does not see the fly on the wall; that I cannot see those who move without starting millions of tiny eye meanders, all at the same time;that the number of neurons stagnates with the lack of activity; that they had deceived me when they tried to convince me that loneliness and isolation are the ideal situation to innovate thinking. Conversely,when one brain interacts with another, what neurologists call social intelligence is bornBeing, precisely, the interrelationships established between the two brains the support that sustains the complexity necessary for the innovation to take place. Whatwithout studying or working the universe would be smaller and life would not have appeared.
Eduardo Punset
