Mar 14, 2025 10:47 PM
(This post was last modified: Mar 14, 2025 10:51 PM by C C.)
Consciousness, the brain, and our chimeric selves
https://iai.tv/articles/consciousness-th..._auid=2020
INTRO: The genetic code that goes on to create our brains, our selves, and our consciousness, is not only hereditary. Anna M. Hennessey argues that microchimerism, where non-hereditary DNA is introduced into our bodies through cells exchanged during pregnancy between the mother and fetus and vice versa, is ripe for scientific and philosophical enquiry. For Hennessey, these exchanges do not only alter our brain but our consciousness itself, and how we experience the world.
EXCERPTS: [...] While the philosophy of mind has largely overlooked pregnancy and birth, biology tells a profound story of interconnected consciousness. As a mother of two, I likely have cells of my children in my brain, and my children could have some of my cells in their brains.
These cells are microchimeric and therefore reside as entities that are separate from our hereditary DNA, while still being fused with our organs and other biological matter. As research shows, these cells may also have an impact on not only how maternal brains function but on how prenatal and neonatal brains develop.
It is therefore possible that the consciousness currently emerging from my brain is not the same as what I had before becoming pregnant with my children, impacted on some level by the presence of their selves in my body. The term “consciousness” is a complex one, though here I am referring to it as an all-encompassing concept of thought that makes up mental experiences and includes the subjective experiences of ideas.
And in the case of my children having received my maternal cells in their brains during the days they spent in my womb, those cells also had an impact on their brains’ developments that differs from the impact of hereditary DNA. If our brains are connected to our selves, then there does seem to be some communal or familial element to the “self” that each of us has ended up with.
Research in psychology on the plasticity of the maternal brain as well as psychiatric studies on the transmission of intergenerational trauma are also of interest because they show that an individual’s physical and psychological selves are intertwined with the physical and psychological selves of other people. Under these conditions, it is difficult to say that the selves we have, or the consciousnesses that we experience, are completely our own.
[...] Whatever the reason for this cell transfer to the mother, the brain of a mother can contain cells from the mother’s own mother, the mother’s children, and even cells from previous pregnancies that did not result in a live birth. This means that a mother’s brain is particularly chimeric, with the cells of multiple foreign subjects possibly inhabiting the same space together.
[...] When my children were very little, I started to notice a shift in my own perceptions and particularly in my aesthetic tastes. ... I always assumed that this shift had to do with the passage of time and having a broader understanding of art as I got older, but the change correlated directly with my experience of becoming a mother. Perhaps this aesthetic modification in my sense experience was connected to the onset of motherhood in my life, though it could relate more to the social aspect of spending time with my children and seeing the world anew through their eyes. Or could it be that those microchimeric cells in my brain originating in my children have impacted my taste in art? Either way, this is just one example of how my subjective experience of consciousness has changed after having children and of becoming a mother... (MORE - missing details)
https://iai.tv/articles/consciousness-th..._auid=2020
INTRO: The genetic code that goes on to create our brains, our selves, and our consciousness, is not only hereditary. Anna M. Hennessey argues that microchimerism, where non-hereditary DNA is introduced into our bodies through cells exchanged during pregnancy between the mother and fetus and vice versa, is ripe for scientific and philosophical enquiry. For Hennessey, these exchanges do not only alter our brain but our consciousness itself, and how we experience the world.
EXCERPTS: [...] While the philosophy of mind has largely overlooked pregnancy and birth, biology tells a profound story of interconnected consciousness. As a mother of two, I likely have cells of my children in my brain, and my children could have some of my cells in their brains.
These cells are microchimeric and therefore reside as entities that are separate from our hereditary DNA, while still being fused with our organs and other biological matter. As research shows, these cells may also have an impact on not only how maternal brains function but on how prenatal and neonatal brains develop.
It is therefore possible that the consciousness currently emerging from my brain is not the same as what I had before becoming pregnant with my children, impacted on some level by the presence of their selves in my body. The term “consciousness” is a complex one, though here I am referring to it as an all-encompassing concept of thought that makes up mental experiences and includes the subjective experiences of ideas.
And in the case of my children having received my maternal cells in their brains during the days they spent in my womb, those cells also had an impact on their brains’ developments that differs from the impact of hereditary DNA. If our brains are connected to our selves, then there does seem to be some communal or familial element to the “self” that each of us has ended up with.
Research in psychology on the plasticity of the maternal brain as well as psychiatric studies on the transmission of intergenerational trauma are also of interest because they show that an individual’s physical and psychological selves are intertwined with the physical and psychological selves of other people. Under these conditions, it is difficult to say that the selves we have, or the consciousnesses that we experience, are completely our own.
[...] Whatever the reason for this cell transfer to the mother, the brain of a mother can contain cells from the mother’s own mother, the mother’s children, and even cells from previous pregnancies that did not result in a live birth. This means that a mother’s brain is particularly chimeric, with the cells of multiple foreign subjects possibly inhabiting the same space together.
[...] When my children were very little, I started to notice a shift in my own perceptions and particularly in my aesthetic tastes. ... I always assumed that this shift had to do with the passage of time and having a broader understanding of art as I got older, but the change correlated directly with my experience of becoming a mother. Perhaps this aesthetic modification in my sense experience was connected to the onset of motherhood in my life, though it could relate more to the social aspect of spending time with my children and seeing the world anew through their eyes. Or could it be that those microchimeric cells in my brain originating in my children have impacted my taste in art? Either way, this is just one example of how my subjective experience of consciousness has changed after having children and of becoming a mother... (MORE - missing details)