In I of the Vortex, Rodolfo Llinas, a founding father of modern brain science, presents an original view of the evolution and nature of mind. According to Llinas, the "mindness state" evolved to allow predictive interactions between mobile creatures and their environment. He illustrates the early evolution of mind through a primitive animal called the "sea squirt." The mobile larval form has a brainlike ganglion that receives sensory information about the surrounding environment. As an adult, the sea squirt attaches itself to a stationary object and then digests most of its own brain. This suggests that the nervous system evolved to allow active movement in animals. To move through the environment safely, a creature must anticipate the outcome of each movement on the basis of incoming sensory data. Thus the capacity to predict is most likely the ultimate brain function. One could even say that Self is the centralization of prediction.At the heart of Llinas's theory is the concept of oscillation. Many neurons possess electrical activity, manifested as oscillating variations in the minute voltages across the cell membrane. On the crests of these oscillations occur larger electrical events that are the basis for neuron-to-neuron communication. Like cicadas chirping in unison, a group of neurons oscillating in phase can resonate with a distant group of neurons. This simultaneity of neuronal activity is the neurobiological root of cognition. Although the internal state that we call the mind is guided by the senses, it is also generated by the oscillations within the brain. Thus, in a certain sense, one could say that reality is not all "out there," but is a kind of virtual reality.

The theme of this book is an explanation (not just description) of consciousness as evolutionarily generated from the motor system. This is counterintuitive: we're used to hearing that consciousness emanates from the processing of sensory/perceptual data, a presumption so widely accepted that it seems incontrovertible. Thus, Linas' standing as a recognized expert allows him to cite basic experimental findings, then bring along other ideas at a more speculative (yet still scientific) stage, to build a thesis of substantial generality. In fact, given the unitary quality of subjective experience, such generality is requisite.

So what is the thesis? That the centralization of motricity is constituitive of consciousness. Centralization (`cephalization') takes the intrinsic coupling and coordination of muscular movement and embeds it in progressively higher levels of the nervous system. Again, this might first seem unexciting; but Llinas underpins his ideas with a cogency which few others could muster, then guides us up the neuraxis to higher brain levels.

He starts with a typically astute interpretation: essential tremor as evidence of a pulsatile control system operating at the tactical level, coping with a computationally intractable confusion of sensory data, whose control any mobile life form must develop. Primitive muscular coordination is then shown to require neural coordination at a higher evolutionary level. The command system penultimately culminates in the basal ganglia, the generator of `fixed action (stereotyped) patterns' of behavior; and, from there, goes to thalamocortical and limbic circuitry where such FAP's are now strategic, and ultimately voluntary.

If one describes the transformation of sensory to motor coordinates as occuring in a state space (called vectorial coordinate space) it's then possible to give a principled account of consciousness as that virtual space which describes those transformations in a broader context of social and emotional dimensions. Put more practically, consciousness emerges unforced as a survival necessity, without which we'd never be able to decide whether to whistle or urinate as a predator (one's boss) enters the men's room.

In truth, there are gaps: Llinas' original papers lack the sweep (other than oscilloscopic) which would give detailed rather than general support to the broader issues here addressed. The 40 Hz hypothesis rests upon MEG studies which one is hard-pressed to coordinate with `conventional' fMRI and PET imaging, let alone individual neurons.

But this is a minor caveat on a playing field where few contributors even agree on the rules of engagement. An investment of attention to the thesis of this book proves surprisingly rewarding.

40 of 42 found the following review helpful:


Very worthwhile  May 20, 2002 By T. Gwinn
The author presents quite a plausible theory of mind, based on his work as a neuroscientist. I suspect Llinas is very much on the right track to illuminating the physical basis of consciousness.

Building chapter-by-chapter simultaneously on the apparent evolutionary development from the simplest neuronal system to the centralized brain, and on the results of brain scans and other experiments, Llinas brings us calmly and reasonably to the resultant human mind of today.

For Llinas, consciousness is the synchronized 40Hz firing of regions of the cortex over time. That is, consciousness is not just a given pattern of firing in 3-space, but is a 4-space relation. That additional dimension of time multiplies enormously the potential number of brain patterns that could occur in an individual. But it also makes the topic that much harder to study.

The writing feels like it has been written by someone who knows alot: there are many points where conceptual connections are not made entirely explicit (because it probably seemed so self-evident to Llinas) and the reader must fill in those gaps. Also, some of his non-neurologic language is quite technical: the description of the "self" as a calculated eigenvector, or the "vortex" which is essentially an attractor (as known in mathematics), that can make Llinas sound like a cold, hard-nosed scientist.

However, Llinas is refreshingly 'human'. For him, it is quite reasonable to assume (as a common consequence of evolution and similarity of brain structure) that many other species have forms of consciousness. Indeed, he devotes an entire chapter to qualia, and contends that qualia exist as essential brain feature, not only for humans but for cats and dogs and most other animals with brains of the same evolutionary genre (and that even in the case of invertebrate (octopus) brains he argues that the burden of proof is on those who would deny qualia).

One caveat: be aware that Llinas does not explicitly delineate between accepted facts and his theory - the book flows as one whole. It is not intented as deception. As he says in the preface "This book presents a personal view of neuroscience...".

22 of 22 found the following review helpful:


Readable and wide-ranging, but all from just one theoretical perspective  Oct 23, 2006 By Chris Chatham
What is the "self" in neural terms? Few would be bold enough to claim an answer to that question. Yet in "I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self," Rodolfo Llinas sketches a very compelling picture of how the self, consciousness, and intelligence may arise in the brain.

Essentially, Llinas's argument goes as follows. First, brains are really only found in animals that move (so, obviously, plants do not have brains). In fact, at least one animal - the sea squirt - actually devours its own brain once it no longer needs to move. Although simple movements might be caused by oscillatory pattern generators in the spinal cord, the brain is necessary for more complex, sensory-guided movement. Why should this be so?

The answer Llinas provides is prediction, or in other words, a sensorimotor internal model of the world based on "dt lookahead" functions, interfacing the motor and sensory systems. Synchronized oscillations from the cerebellum (Llinas's area of expertise) carry out the motor-side of this computation, giving rise to the characteristic 8-12 Hz periodicity of the neural signals that command voluntary movements. At a higher frequency (40 Hz), other neuronal oscillations throughout the thalamocortical system serve to bind sensory representations together. And the subjective, cognitive correlate of the intersection of these oscillations is no less than the self: "this temporally coherent event that binds, in the time domain, the fractured components of external and internal reality into a single construct is what we call the 'self.'"

But wait, doesn't that mean that all animals have a sense of "self"- even the lowly sea squirt (at least before it eats its brain)? It would seem so. But that's not the end of Llinas's more controversial claims. Llinas also suggests that neural networks explain "very little concerning the actual functioning of the nervous system itself," advocating instead the idea that most of our cognitive abilities are genetically prewired at birth. Along these lines, Llinas endorses Chomsky's idea that genes may to a large extent determine language, and furthermore that language exists in many species besides homo sapiens.

It is here that "I of the Vortex" starts to seem more like a manifesto than a careful scientific analysis. For example, after introducing the basics of neurophysiology and comparative neurology in the first half of the book, Llinas skips the cognitive level of analysis almost altogether and starts extrapolating directly to issues of consciousness, awareness, and selfhood. This bias against direct investigations of cognition (something arguably very important for understanding consciousness) is nowhere more apparent than when he refers to cognitive neuroscience as "neophrenology." But without this important middle-level of analysis, Llinas is mostly shooting from the hip in the second half of the book - and aiming for concepts that are simply too far removed from Llinas's expertise in cellular neurophysiology.

On the whole, Llinas has done an admirable job of outlining one particular view of how neuronal dynamics may give rise to consciousness in an embodied cognition framework. In this sense, "I of the Vortex" makes an excellent companion to other high-level introductions to cognitive neuroscience.

15 of 15 found the following review helpful:


Great.  Jan 31, 2002 By Carlos Camara "marrorris2"
Llinas is of course, a famous neuroscientist, and his views on consciousness in the 90's took the side of the 40 hertz gamma band ocillations in the thalamocortical system. This book reviews his views in almost all aspects of neuroscience. His evolutionary insights, and his discussion of how important action and motor mechanisms are for cognition are truly in accord with recent study in "embodied cognition". As for consciousness itself, we are left with a narrow expansion of his earlier views. Ocillatory behavior on neurons is still the key in Llinas framework, and the thalamus still has its central role, as are his insights on wakefulness and sleep. As for originallity,one can trace his views on the origin of the self in Damasio's writings, his view on qualia in Rodney Cotteril's, and ocillatory ideas on Crick (but Llinas got there before), Singer, Von-Mandlesburg, etc.. All in all, however, the book is a must read for anyone intersested in the neurosciences and consciousness, and is a valuable contribution to the theorist enterprise that has few who venture into an integration of top- down and bottom-up approaches. LLinas is to be praised for his brilliant career, and his valuable contributions to the field, including this volume.

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