AM: I"d like to return for a moment to the first rhythms that we learn, to our time as a fetus in the womb. The fetus adapts itself to its mother"s pulse in developing its brain activities or consciousness.
DL: This is an interesting phase during which we are absorbing external rhythms, primarily the pulsations of our mother"s aorta, but even after birth we may have preferences for music heard by our mother during the time she was carrying us. Naturally, however, it is the aorta that is the most obvious source of rhythm, as the child is lying with its ear practically right up against it. This is an interesting phase, because here the subject-object model of perception has still to develop. At this stage the nervous system lacks rhythm, for it must first develop its time, but there are already certain notchings in this growth which in other respects may be regarded as continuous. Next there comes a phase in which something can actually be perceived, but the fetus is not yet properly able to situate its perceptions in relation to each other. There"s a highly interesting dynamic process here affecting perception itself, including the perception of rhythms. This is an extremely exciting area of study which has not yet properly been explored. An increase in functions has been observed in this phase, but at the same time there is also a loss of neurons. You find the same thing in the development of the child in its fourth year, when neurons are again lost. Development is not continuous in the sense that the neurons simply go on increasing until a point is reached at which only the neuronal axes and synapses increase. In the fourth year of life certain connections are discontinued and certain neurons die. This has to do with the fact that the structure of the nervous system isaltered by the growth of perception, and with it the structure of cognition. The speech faculty improves dramatically as well during this phase. Our exploration of the neurobiology of the young human being is in a certain sense still only beginning, but it could become important for educational theory, which should be able to find points of contact with the cognitive level and with neurological development. The phase at which neurons are being lost, and when certain structures are taking shape in the nervous system, is precisely the phase within the family structure during which the law of the father can be imposed upon the child. The unpleasant aspect of having to reorient oneself to society has entered the myth of Oedipus, which is perhaps the symbolic representation of a deeper neuronal event: castration at a deep neuronal level. Not everything Freud tells us is wrong, but it refers to only one cultural situation in which the overlapping of particular family structures conceals the neuronal process of civilization. This opens up a very interesting dimension: the process of self-orientation in society ought to be described quite differently, because the nervous system itself is interested in acquiring a structure. This is what makes it what it is. It creates for itself a legitimate guarantee of order, otherwise the chaos becomes too great. We cannot survive without a law or a structure. Today there"s a tendency to say ? in theories of self-organization for example ? that things just organize themselves automatically. But it is wrong to say that the law is something alien, something notched onto the nervous system from outside. If we know that this notching process is something actually in ourselves, we may perhaps understand more readily what our nervous systems need to enable us to orient ourselves satisfactorily in society. The neurobiology of human development is in need of a few minima moralia.