Genes and Memes

This article is adapted from two columns Robert Sylwester wrote in his Brain Connections series for the Internet journal Brain Connection.

Readers of this article will likely enjoy the December 2008 IAE Newsletter.

FROM GENES TO MEMES

Robert Sylwester

Emeritus Professor of Education

University of Oregon

Introduction
When we conceived our children, my wife and I had to give them genetic instructions on how to build their bodies, including such developmental issues as nose placement and skin color. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) located in the nucleus of each body cell regulates this task. DNA is thus the genetic recipe book on body organization, development, and maintenance that parents give to their children. But providing such genetic information is only part of the human parenting charge. We also have to teach our children how to become decent, productive, reproductive human beings. Our upright stance and consequent narrow female birth canal results in a child whose birth brain can only be one-third its adult size. Most human cognitive development thus occurs after birth (as compared to other mammals whose female birth canal is slightly larger than the almost fully developed brain that passes through it).

We begin life as a wet noisy pet and require 20 years at best to move into an autonomous adulthood. Our long juvenile dependency has of necessity turned us into a highly interdependent social species that must master complex cultural information and communication systems. Further, our upright stance frees our forelimbs from mere body movement and so creates grasping, handling, throwing, and signaling capabilities that materially expand the complexity of learned human culture.

In his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins proposed the concept of memes to explain the analogous transmission of cultural information. Susan Blackmore wrote an extended non-technical exploration of the concept in The Meme Machine (1999). Robert Aunger wrote a more technical analysis of the concept in The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think (2002).

To put it simply, A gene is a biological replicator that transmits hereditary characteristics – such as the location of the nose on human faces, the shape of a dopamine molecule, and the repairing of skin cuts.  A meme is the cultural equivalent of a gene -- a bit of useful imitative information that passes from one person to another, but that can evolve in the process – such as the directions for tying shoelaces, the multiplication tables, and a joke that spreads through the population. Genes thus transmit biological information between generations, and memes transmit cultural information within a generation (but also potentially into subsequent generations via permanent records). As suggested above, memes can range from trivial jokes, tunes, and slogans to such useful information as how to acquire and prepare food and shelter. Like genes, memes can evolve over time (such as in clothing fashions).

Genetics
As suggested above, genetics is about how to assemble a complex information system (an organism) out of a relatively few production elements (amino acids). Only 20 different amino acids are needed to create the myriad of proteins that build and maintain our body because the genetic information in a protein is coded into the assembled sequence of amino acids and the length of the amino acid chain (a gene). Every cell’s nucleus contains the organism’s twisted ladder-like DNA strand – and each sequence of three rungs on the strand codes for a specific amino acid. Each gene provides the coded amino acid sequence for one specific protein. Human DNA contains some 30,000 genes that construct and maintain our 10 trillion cell body.

Plant/animal species that combine male and female genetic information in their offspring must develop a mating procedure. The birth and rearing of a human is a very expensive long-term task, so to encourage conception, it was useful for us to surround it with pleasure and romance (rape, child sexual molestation, and fear of pregnancy being exceptions). Recent developments in in-vitro fertilization and cloning pose human mating alternatives.

Memes
It’s obvious that genes can’t provide children with all the information they’ll need to survive in a complex, interdependent, constantly shifting environment. Humans thus developed a learned meme system to replicate and transmit useful imitative cultural information. Mirror neurons in an observer’s brain that replicate and respond to the neuronal activity occurring in an observed person’s brain are a very important recent discovery about how key cultural imitation capabilities emerge in a child (Sylwester, 2006. Iacaboni, 2008).

Mating thus provides the vehicle for combining and transmitting genetic information, and language provides an excellent analogous vehicle for transmitting memetic information. Intriguingly, language functions very much like coded genetic transmission. Hundreds of thousands of English words can be developed from 26 alphabetic letters because the meaning of a word is coded into the sequence of its letters, and not into the letters themselves (eg, do, dog, god, good). Further, words can be strung into more complex sentences, paragraphs, and stories. A multitude of melodies can similarly be composed from different sequences of the 12 tones of the musical scale.

Articulate language and song thus use a coding system with striking parallels to genetics -- but compressed speech and expanded song differ in important ways in what they seek to do.

Content is central to spoken expression, so when we speak to others, we compress a lot of information into a relatively short time frame by speaking rapidly and by not varying the tone of our voice. Feelings are central to song, so song stretches out the expression of what’s typically a simple message focused on danger/opportunity, or on likes/dislikes in order to enhance the feelings implicit in the message.

If all George Handel wanted to say was Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth, why did it take him so long to say it? Song drags out the vowels and repeats words/phrases, and this allows the singer to use melody, harmony, timbre, volume, and other musical elements to insert a range of feelings into the simple message. The result is that hearing an orchestra and chorus perform Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus is a much more profound experience than merely hearing or reading the words.

Much of the first decade of our life is devoted to mastering oral (first five years) and written language (second five years). Music seems to dominate our adolescent years, which are focused on the development of personal/social identity and the various bonding allegiances that will characterize adult life – the elements of life that music communicates so well.

Mastering articulate and musical languages are thus important developmental tasks, and schools that eliminate music to save money seemingly don’t understand the underlying purpose and complexity of human communication.

Teaching and Learning
Animals that have a relatively short lifespan and live within a narrow ecological niche are born with innate survival and reproductive strategies. They typically die when they confront an environmental challenge beyond their innate capabilities. Variant members of their species who can somehow meet the challenge will survive, and so pass on the genetic characteristics that enhanced their success. The concept of learning for such species is thus an evolutionary process in which generations gradually adapt to environmental change.

Humans need a supplementary strategy. We have a long interdependent lifespan and can live almost anywhere. We thus confront many complex challenges that would be difficult at best to genetically encode (such as to recognize individuals, recall restaurants, play a piano, and construct clothing). Since we’re born with a very immature brain, most of our survival strategies aren’t innate, but rather must be learned throughout life, and especially during our extended juvenile stage. Brain processes that enhance learning are thus essential to human life. Mirror neurons, memory, and memes are key elements of this complex system; and mentoring and teaching enhance it.

Intriguingly, learned motor activity functions much like coding mechanisms of genetics, language, music, and numerical systems, in that a relatively small number of basic elements are sequentially activated to create something that’s more complex. Reach, grasp, lift, drink, and retract are a set of basic movements that can be used in a variety on arm/hand/finger behaviors, just as any letter of the alphabet is used in many different words.

Our three-pound adult brain is biologically expensive. It’s only 2% of our body’s weight, but it uses 20% of our body’s energy. The good news is that our large brain’s processing capabilities provide us with such important advantages as superior imitative and communication skills that enhance learning, and considerable flexibility in how we respond to novel and familiar challenges.

The Physical Reality of Memes
Genes were only a functional concept at the beginning of the 20th century. No one understood the physical manifestation of biological replication. The discovery of DNA in 1953 identified the biological substrate of the genetic codes that develop and maintain our body. The issue at the beginning of the 21st century is similar: Do cultural ideas (memes) that are similarly critical to human development and survival also have an inherent physical manifestation? Does a meme thus merely inhabit my brain during an independent lifetime in which it will infect many brains?

In The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think, Robert Aunger (2003) argues (in a fascinating but somewhat technical exploration of the issue) that memes do exist, and suggests where memes might be located in our brain. He suggests however that much further discovery about our brain (and especially memory) must occur before we truly understand memes.

Aunger doesn’t consider artifacts (such as cars or shoes) or behaviors (such as guitar playing or skiing) to be memes in themselves since they don’t have the internal replicative capability that genes have. He includes an extensive discussion of computer viruses, which he also doesn’t currently consider memetic for the same reason. But then, who knows what will occur in computer technology and artificial intelligence during the next few years? I’m only 15 years beyond owning an Apple 2e, which I then thought had amazing capabilities.

Only brain states currently have the internal ability to replicate information and behavior, and Aunger believes that the most likely candidate for the location of the physical substrate of memes would be in small activation nodes (or systems) of neurons within larger memory networks. Genetic information is used to build and maintain one’s body, but it can also be sexually transmitted into a new organism. Aunger suggests that memetic information is similarly coded into memory networks where it’s principally used to help solve personal problems, but it can also be transmitted to others via imitation and language.

A memory network is a (currently ill-understood) neuronal configuration that can represent an idea, object, or event. Think of the Happy Birthday Song. A birthday will activate the memory network, but it’s also possible for other networks in our brain to internally trigger the network, even though no birthday is being celebrated (and you’re probably mentally singing the Happy Birthday Song right now).

But just as it’s possible to construct a protein by expressing the information in a gene without destroying the gene in the process, it’s similarly possible to transmit the information in our memory into other brains via language and/or behavior without destroying our own memory. It’s a replication of information, not a gift. The Happy Birthday Song thus becomes a meme whose evolutionary travels among culturally related brains are analogous to the spread of genetic information within a species. It’s also possible (but not known for sure) that a specific meme’s brain location and configuration might be similar in different people.

Aunger titled his book The Electric Meme because he believes that a meme is principally a function of the electrochemical state of a specific neuronal network node – its propensity to activate other networks. Unlike the network itself, the node’s firing state can be duplicated elsewhere within a brain – or enter into the brain of another person -- so the node’s electrochemical state provides for a meme what the DNA code provides for a gene.

Memes are an intriguing, but currently complicated concept. DNA was similarly difficult for most people to understand when it was discovered. I expect that we’ll hear much more about this still controversial concept in the coming years. Further, in the process we’ll come to understand teaching and learning at a much more fundamental level, just as we’ve increased our understanding of genetics tremendously during the past 50 years. The excellent books by Dawkins, Blackmore, and Aunger provide a stimulating introduction to the concept of memes, and Iacoboni adds significant non-technical information relative to the role that mirror neurons play in the process.

References and Selected Resources
Aunger, R. (2002) The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think. New York: Free Press

Blackmore, S. (1999) The Meme Machine. New York: Oxford University Press.

Dawkins, R. (1976) The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University Press

Iacoboni, M. (2008)  Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect With Others. New York: Farrar, Giroux and Strauss

Sylwester (February 2006) Mirror Neuron Update http://www.brainconnection.com/content/226_1

From Genes to Memes is an update of a two-part column by Robert Sylwester that was published in the Internet journal Brain Connection in May and June of 2003

Robert Sylwester is an Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Oregon who focuses on educationally significant developments in the cognitive neurosciences. His most recent book is The Adolescent Brain: Reaching for Autonomy (2007, Corwin Press).