I am going to connect the mind and the brain. I will move from history,
to personality, to an exploration of neurology, to psychology, and on to
maturity. You will see who you can marry. I will describe the compatibilities
and conflicts between you and your marriage partner, and between the two of you
and your children.
So, let us begin…
Our goal in this book is to link cognitive styles to MBNI[1]. We’ll examine the circuits that underlie this popular psychological theory. We’ll demonstrate their connection to childhood development. Then, we’ll take a quick tour through conditions such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Alzheimer’s disease. Finally, we’ll unveil brain functioning, and the causes for conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia.
We begin with a simple definition of ‘working memory.’ This is a circuit that cycles from one place to another, and then comes back again. Thoughts can only develop when components move in a loop, so that the end builds up and maintains the beginning. Some circuits may be quite complex: In the body, for instance, blood leaves the heart, and travels through multiple tiny capillaries before returning to the initial pumping station. It doesn’t matter that the loop is complicated; it’s still a circuit, and that’s the important thing.
It happens that cognitive styles also cycle their way to consciousness, and this too is somewhat complex. There is a theory that describes some of the possible paths. I refer of course to the description, with the trademarked name that we cannot use, which speaks of Thinking, Feeling, iNtuition[2] and Sensing, and that for legal reasons we will therefore rename MBNI. Why does a description of the mind require MBNI in addition to cognitive styles? I’ll say it in one sentence, and in capital letters: MBNI GIVES THE WIRING DIAGRAM OF THE HIPPOCAMPO-SEPTAL STRUCTURE IN THE HUMAN BRAIN.
The hippocampus is a central
region in the lower middle of each of the two hemispheres of the brain. Its role
was discovered many decades ago from the misfortunes of a child called HM: “When
HM was nine years old,” we read, “a head injury in a bicycle accident left him
with debilitating epilepsy. To relieve his seizures that could not be controlled
in any other way, surgeons removed parts of HM’s hippocampus and adjoining brain
regions. The operation succeeded in reducing the brain seizures but
inadvertently severed the mysterious link between short-term and long-term
memory. Information destined for what is known as declarative memory—people,
places, events—must pass through the hippocampus before being recorded in the
cerebral cortex. Thus, memories from long ago that were already stored in HM’s
brain remained clear, but all his experiences of the present soon faded into
nothing. HM saw his doctor on a monthly basis, but at each visit it was as if
the two had never met.”
[1] MBTI® and MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR® are registered trademarks and MYERS-BRIGGS™ is a trademark of Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc., the publisher of the MBTI instrument. We are not affiliated with and are not a licensee of Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc. For legal reasons, we call our theory MBNI, or “Multiple Branched Nodes, Interacting.” It describes a “Mind to Brain Neural Interface.” ‘NI’ is MB New and Improved—the base has not been altered.
[2] The second letter has been capitalized to distinguish iNtuition from Introversion.