(San Francisco Chronicle publish March 4, 2013)

By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP, Murali Doraiswamy, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH); Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University

In the first post we said that the world that we perceive, with all its colors, textures, and sounds, isn’t the same as the real world. Other creatures process the raw data of the world far differently from us, like the eagle that can spot a mouse from hundreds of feet in the air, or the desert fox, whose oversized ears can hear an insect crawling under the sand of a dune. As important as these differences are, the real question is how our brains turn sense data into reality, for that is what we are doing every moment of our lives. There is no light or sound inside the dark, damp recesses of the brain, no pictures or music, yet somehow we see, hear, touch, taste, and feel things as if they are reliably real. (more…)

By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP, Murali Doraiswamy, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH); Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University

When you give a red rose to your beloved on Valentine’s Day, you have every right to say, “I made this for you.” All the qualities that a rose possesses – its velvety texture, lush red color, even its thorns – are real to us because our perception makes them real. Photons of light have no color, only frequencies and wavelengths. The point of a thorn has no sharpness. The scent of a rose isn’t sweet when seen merely as airborne molecules. The reality of these specific qualities is tied to us. The brain processes electrochemical signals sent from photoreceptors in the eye to “create” the color red. Skin encapsulated mechanosensory receptors send electrochemical signals that reassure us of a solid “material” world, but the prick of a thorn is created by our brain. Indeed we now know that the brain takes into account a number of factors to choose how much pain to create; varying any one of these factors can affect how prickly the same thorn is. (more…)

By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP, Murali Doraiswamy, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH); Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University

In any collection of quotes by Albert Einstein, one of the most intriguing is this: “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” Anyone who is interested in going beyond the illusion to find a more satisfying reality would pay attention, but in actuality we all have made ourselves comfortable with the illusion that convinces us. Even physicists, who know with certainty that seemingly solid objects are actually constructed of invisible energy clouds, treat tables, chairs, and cars stalled in traffic like solid, tangible things. Quantum mechanics has shown for more than 80 years now that the perceived reality of hard objects that senses give us is an illusion. (more…)