Neurological Correlates

/film (”slashfilm) is reporting that there will be 3 Spock’s in the new Star Trek film. Sounds like this will be ripe for a Neuro Movie Review! (See also here).

Spock’s mother is Winona Ryder. (See, Girl, Interrupted ).

This casting is wild, imo. I mean, if Ms. Ryder does have “borderline” tendencies, at least as a character and possibly some issues in real life, the viewer will be thinking about these.

I hope they don’t make her the two dimensional, nurturing mother, mourning some lost ennobled Vulcan father. Let’s go a little deeper.

Why would an Earthling marry and mate with a Vulcan to begin with? If she could express emotion, how could she sacrifice herself to be with a Vulcan, who could not return the affiliative behavior? Do Vulcan’s have vasopressin receptors like prairie voles? Why wouldn’t she run off with, say, Mr. Sulu’s father? Was this an arranged marriage, to bind two galaxies?
Was she repulsed by the pointed ears on the baby Spock? And what about Dr. Spock – did he ever examine the little Mr. Spock?

I always wondered about Spock. I mean, he has no emotion, yet does no evil. What prevents him from sacrificing others to save himself during a Romulan attack? What did Mr. Spock get out of his X chromosome? Do Vulcans have an X chromosome? Did his nurturing rewire his white matter so that he could have some empathy or compassion, perhaps by growing mirror neurons? Can we see the little Spock’s brain scans?

I really hope they don’t go Freudian. That would be so lame.

Leonard Nimoy is great — Vincent, as Vincent Van Gogh’s brother, Theo, a play he wrote, directed and starred in (from the ’80’s) is terrific — although I wonder if he would change it now, knowing what he now knows 20+ years later.

I’ve never been much of a Star Trek fan, but this I want to see. So far, the pre-movie leaks are giving rise to a trekkie-ish spat. Some pre-movie pre-view mixed reviews , (AICN), are rebutted as factually inaccurate by one of the writers, here who claims the mixed reviews are just sour grapes for some unknown reason.

These trekkies take things so seriously — I should Pubmed that crowd. (Notice I just turned Pubmed into a verb, you heard it here first - yup, very un-Vulcan-like to make up new words).