Famine and the Creation of Reality by the Brain

Editorial note (2026-10-03): this 2013 essay preserves the author’s philosophical interpretation of the brain “creating reality”. Epidemiologic associations and IGF2 methylation do not demonstrate that every exposed child developed illness, that methylation caused particular disorders, or that the fetus made a prediction. The famine death estimate and a chemical caption have been corrected using NIOD and NHGRI; Heijmans and colleagues (2008) were consulted for the limited epigenetic result.
Famine and the Creation of Reality by the Brain

 

During the winter of 1944-1945, a great famine struck parts of Holland that were under German occupation. In September 1944, the Allies had launched Operation Market Garden, a daring attack on German forces in Holland and Germany. Because of initial success and in order to frustrate Nazi retaliation, the Dutch underground urged Dutch railway workers to strike and shut down the trains. However, Operation Market Garden soon stalled and to bypass the railway strike, the Nazis commandeered all means of transport. They also blocked access to Holland from the west, shutting off the food supply. As Holland entered one of the coldest winters on record, the Hongerwinter as it was called, nutrition was reduced to below 500 calories for each person per day. Famine was widespread; people ate tulip bulbs to survive! And by spring 1945, the famine had caused many deaths. Editorial correction (2026-10-03): NIOD reports uncertainty about the exact toll; estimates cited there include roughly 15,000–25,000 direct and indirect victims, rather than an established count of 30,000 starvation deaths.

 

 

Nutrition returned to normal quickly after the end of the War. But even so, it was soon apparent that the effects of the famine continued and that in particular, children born to malnourished mothers were suffering an especially terrible and completely unexpected impact, even when food was plentiful. As these Hunger Winter offspring grew into adulthood, studies reported associations with later risks of conditions including psychiatric and cardiometabolic illness; these were not outcomes shared by every exposed person. It seemed that the stress of famine had caused profound and lasting alterations in their growth and the ability of their brains to function normally, even when their bodies were nourished normally.

 

Searching for a cause, researchers at the University of Leiden examined the DNA of the offspring for changes that could explain the persisting effects of the famine. The assays revealed striking alterations in methyl groups, chemical marks added to the DNA that modify gene expression without actually changing the genetic sequences. These are called epigenetic changes because the gene expression changes without alteration of DNA sequences. Changes in DNA methylation can be related to gene regulation, but the IGF2 study described here measured methylation rather than demonstrating a genome-wide majority of losses or the resulting gene expression. The methylation association in this study concerned periconceptional famine exposure and scientists speculated that absence of the nutrients needed to affix the methyl marks to the embryos’ DNA from the mothers’ diets caused the deficiencies in the marks. Looking further, the researchers found lower average methylation at a regulatory region of IGF2, a gene encoding insulin-like growth factor-2, decades after periconceptional famine exposure. This observational study did not establish direct dietary causation or measure increased IGF2 expression. It seemed that the harsh experience of the fetus as it developed within a mother stricken by famine, predicted birth into a dire world, and the fetus used epigenetic mechanisms to prepare itself for a lifetime fraught by famine. The reaction to trauma was so strong that the developing brains “thought” that the trauma would continue as the norm of life. Thus, the developing brains created their own reality out of a chaotic world, in this case a world of famine. They imposed a form on the world that gave shape to the chaos, chaos, which on its own had no meaning. Editorial note (2026-10-03): the philosophical interpretation is preserved as the author’s argument. The IGF2 sentence was corrected to distinguish the observational result from proposed mechanisms; this cohort does not establish individual outcomes or a demonstrated brain mechanism.

 

To give shape and stability to an ever-changing world, the brain creates its own reality and the world created in response to the Hongerwinter is a particularly grim example. But there are other examples of creation of reality by the brain that are more commonplace and constructive, such as the creation of the color of a leaf, or the sound of a closing door, or the taste of an olive.

 

 

Another brain creation that is quite striking and known to all of us is the appearance of motion of objects or images that in fact are perfectly stationary. One example is the blinking lights of an electronic sign. With the electronic sign, as the lights that neighbor one another in a row flash, they remain absolutely in the same spot. Yet you do not see a row of stationary lights, side by side, individually blinking. You see motion of lights that form words that appear to traverse a building wall. For the brain, there is no such thing as the one particular moment when one light is on and the other off. The brain makes a synthesis of this moment plus the next moment and this gives rise to the appearance of moving words, a kind of Jamesian flow of consciousness and a new reality.  The same occurs when we watch the projection of the individual images of a motion picture film. If the frames were projected slowly, one by one, we would perceive each as a still photo. But when projected at least at 24 frames per second, the brain creates a convincing appearance of motion, again a new reality.

 

 

The brain’s Hunger Winter response was a tragic error of biology. After the war, when nutrition returned to normal, the epigenetic changes were not actually required, but the observed methylation differences do not prove that they caused altered brain function, obesity or heart disease. The brain altered itself in response to the great stress of the Hunger Winter, even after the stress no longer existed. So the brain over-compensated, predicting that this will be the norm of the future, a philosophical interpretation of later health associations, rather than a demonstrated causal explanation for schizophrenia, depression or obesity.

Despite its erring reaction to the Hunger Winter, as the brain creates reality, more often than not it gets things right. By creating the appearance of motion, or color, or touch, or pain or the craving for a food, the brain gives rise to something that is not there, per se, but nonetheless, the creation of this reality enables the organism to deal better with its environment.  The power of the reality created by the brain has to do with prediction. The organism must be able to anticipate and even predict what will happen from moment to moment within the individual’s chaotic world environment.

Thus this creation of reality takes place during the progression of time. Everything is represented in terms of the moment before and the moment after. The brain constantly synthesizes one moment into the next and thereby it is creating a multi-dimensionality that provides an understanding of the environment and allows us to move around without bumping into things.