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| NI FEATURE - COMMENTARY: TIMELESS REVERBERATIONS |
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| Year : 2018 | Volume
: 66
| Issue : 5 | Page : 1242-1243 |
The journey of my life and its culmination in correlative neuro-philosophy
I Dinakar
Department of Neurosurgery, Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad, Telangana; Kurnool Medical College, Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, India
| Date of Web Publication | 17-Sep-2018 |
Correspondence Address:
Dr. I Dinakar
Department of Neurosurgery, Yashoda Hospital, Alexander Road, Secunderabad, Secunderabad, Telangana - 500 003
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/0028-3886.241375
How to cite this article:
Dinakar I. The journey of my life and its culmination in correlative neuro-philosophy. Neurol India 2018;66:1242-3 |
I attended Andhra Medical College, Vishakapatnam and graduated in 1959 as the most distinguished of the batch (Blue ribbon, Anderson gold medal). As an internee in December 1960 and January 1961, I was trained in Neurosurgery under the mentorship of Dr. Balaparameshwar Rao, Head of Neurosurgery, Andhra Medical College, who had just then returned from the UK after a two year fellowship. Inspired by Dr. Balaparameshwar Rao, I chose Neurosurgery as my profession. During my subsequent training as an MCh trainee at the Christian Medical College Hospital, Prof. Jacob Chandy, infused the concept of “Operating Neurologist”, emphasizing the importance of Clinical Neurology. My passion towards Clinical Neurology was reinforced during daily patient rounds and attending clinics under the supervision of Dr. J. C. Jacob and Dr. G.M. Taori. Neurosurgery training was imparted by Dr. K. V. Mathai and Dr. Jacob Abraham.
Upon returning to Andhra Medical College, I started to use conray in myelography and ventriculography, which was the first time ever in India. The award of Smith and Nephew fellowship enabled me to travel to Edinburgh for a year to train in stereotactic surgery under the guidance of Prof. Gillingham. During fellowship at Edinburgh, I worked on continuous monitoring of muscle tone during surgical exploration of ventral-lateral nucleus (VLN) of the thalamus as well as the globus pallidus. In association with Dr. E.G. Walsh, I studied muscle tone in Parkinsonism More Details; our work was later presented and appreciated at the Physiological Society of London. Subsequently, I worked on the performance of cisternal myelography using conray with Dr. E. Hitchcock. As an appreciation to my contribution during my work with Dr. Hitchcock, I was appointed as Honorary Fellow of Surgical Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, Edinburgh, in 1972.
After successful training in the UK, upon return to India, the Government of Andhra Pradesh, appointed me as the Professor of Neurosurgery, Kurnool Medical College. With scarce-to-no facilities, and without qualified assistance for nearly a decade, I had to perform services in Neurosurgery, Neurology and Radiology at the Kurnool Medical College, Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh. Things, however, changed for the good in 1986, when I was appointed as theFirst Professor and Head of Neurosurgery at the Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS), Hyderabad. It is here at NIMS that I spent the next decade of professional life, establishing post-graduate training programs, the spinal cord trauma center, and the center for comprehensive management for cerebral palsy that included surgical procedures like selective posterior rhizotomy. Despite limited sources and financial constraints, young, qualified and trained neurosurgeons joined me at NIMS to improve Neurosurgery. They helped me to scale greater heights to enable me to serve as the Director of NIMS until retirement in 1996. Post-retirement, the acumen to understand the unknown still existed in me. This inspired me to explore Neurobiology and Neuro-philosophy; thus leading me to develop the concept of “Correlative” Neuro-philosophy – bridging the gaps and interpreting ancient philosophical concepts from scriptures, and correlating them with the recent advances in Neurosciences. I seized an opportunity to write about Correlative Neuro-philosophy as an editorial, an article that has been widely read. In this article, I emphasized the fact that “The brain creates models of the physical world by combining signals from the senses and prior expectations, based on Bayes' Theorem of probability. It is precisely these models which we are aware of (that are consciously perceived). Through associative learning and verifying the models constructed thereof, the brain constructs world–maps of value, for example, maps that locate objects of high value. Maps indicating actions of high value (behaviour) are likely to be successful. These maps provide the basis for top-down impulses, which react with new impulses processed upwards in the next sensory experience to form new models, and this phenomenon continues.”
Making the editorial more apt, I passed a thought to every reader that “Our only access to the world is indirect through our perceptual filtering organs and embodiment through neuronal distillation. We mistake our conceived external reality to be the real one due to failure to distinguish between ‘knowing' and ‘knowing about the neurological fact' that we have access only through the representations as well as information filtered through the fine filigree of the nervous system. We can have only perspectives on reality that we only ‘know about'. The objective truth –'knowing'- remains elusive because it is illusive!”
Acknowledgement
The Editor of Neurology India is grateful to Dr. Manas Panigrahi and Dr. Sudhindra Vooturi, Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences, for their help with this article.
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