Bette Lamont
News of the day: A speech prosthetic developed by a collaborative team of neuroscientists, neurosurgeons, and engineers can translate a person’s brain signals into what they’re trying to say. The new technology might one day help people unable to talk due to neurological disorders regain the ability to communicate through a brain-computer interface.
Isn’t this wonderful in so many ways, and yet how much of ourselves can AI replace?
I want to look at the function of speech and how, as I speak to a friend about something distressing, I feel a surge of a hormone that folds into my muscles and my subconscious and it reveals to me the word ‘shame’ as my body withdraws into a sinking posture that embodies that shame.
Then as I calm myself, my breath and the solidity of my feet on the ground offer me the word ‘equanimity’.
As I am comforted through the touch, soothing voice, and closeness of a dear friend, yet a new hormone arises from my brain and fills my body and I am now offered the words ‘connection’ and ‘safety’. And as I entrain with a safe friend, oxytocin naturally passes between us, thanks to a profound emotional mirroring system, shaping my brain and thoughts.
My speech arises from every part of my body. My thoughts arise from every part of my body’s experiences.
AI may have something to offer us, but what it can’t offer is the whole body/brain connection that is on a constant and ever evolving feedback loop of subconscious, proprioceptive, and hormonal information that gathers to inform your emotion-driven right brain, which then helps your left brain find the word ‘happy’.
The AI imitation of human thought, speech, or function is merely a clever ‘brain on the spectrum’.
Fully developed and integrated brains are ‘integrated’ into the entire life history, and the global awareness of every body cell, organ, and hormone that is swirling in the context of a unique human experience to produce genius.
Every brain is born a genius. Ninety percent of five year olds display genius.
And what feeds that genius is the Developmental Sequence – those reflexes, movements, and sensations that bring together a full interaction of all developmental functions within a rich and safe and loving environment.
While AI moves further and further into our lives, we want to reaffirm that the real genius of a human being is not their cortical alacrity and verbosity, but rather the integration of all developmental stages of life, the profound process by which movement creates the brain.
Too many of our children are being pushed towards cortical competence without the underlying motor and sensory triggers that lead to full integration. Please consider this as you resist the dominant narrative that demands early learning, early digital competence, and artificial learning experiences through gaming, rather than the reality of a full life.
NeuroDevelopmental Movement® Consultants are committed to making sure that every healthy baby meets their NeuroDevelopmental milestones and that every child with a NeuroDevelopmental gap or immaturity has the opportunity to grow into a full, happy, and productive life.