Cellular functions

Every cell in the human body contains an identical set of instructions in the form of a five foot long string of DNA. This string of DNA contains three billion bits of information (about the same information carrying capacity of a CD-ROM).

The information contained in this string of DNA is similar to that of a computer program, containing the instructions necessary to create every component in the body and provide the necessary communications and interactivity that give the human body dynamic life.

The cells in the body take up a multitude of different shapes and perform a multitude of different functions according to which parts of the DNA are activated in particular cells. Communication and interactivity is achieved by means of sections of the DNA being able to generate chemical messages. The sections of the DNA that can create these chemical messages are called genes and the mesages that these genes send out can selectively turn other genes on or off, or, modify the messages of other genes.

This communication and activity between cells is what causes the cells to take up different shapes and perfom different functions. It is a vastly complex dynamic system that tens of thousands of scientists are trying very hard to explore and explain.

This book assumes you have a working knowledge of cell biology. If you haven't, then the Eurika Science web pages will provide useful explanation of genes and the chemical messages they produce:

An introduction to DNA (pop-up window)

The difficulties of the task facing scientists is exemplified by the human brain, where there are billions cells interacting with each other and communicating using hundreds of different kinds of chemical messages. Here, the application of logic and rational though processes are powerless to fully expain the complexities of the workings of the human brain.

The inability of human logic to fathom the intricate workings of the brain have caused neuroscientists to take a different approach. Instead of trying to understand the intricacies of the cellular activity, they have started to try to understand how Nature came to create the human brain in the first place.

This approach is now revealing an ingenious, underlying simplicity that is leading to a full understanding of mind and emotions.

The starting place is the abstraction of the components of the human body as it is represented in a Hilbert space. Then to figure out how Nature managed to navigate this space to find exactly the right mix of components and functions to construct a human being.

The same strategy applies to understanding the functioning of the human brain. If this can be represented by components in a Hilbert Space, we can figure out how nature creates a navigation system to move around in this space to create the phenomena of perception, consciousness, patterns of thought and emotions.