I read the article, “Secrets of the Brain”, found in the February 2014 issue of National Geographic written by Carl Zimmer. I chose this subject because I have been fascinated with the brain and how it works. The research of the brain has been ongoing for many centuries now. The history in this article is interesting. It explained how scientists used to understand the brain and its inner workings. For example, “in the ancient world physicians believed that the brain was made of phlegm. Aristotle looked on it as a refrigerator, cooling of the fiery heart. From his time through the Renaissance, anatomists declared with great authority that our perceptions, emotions, reasoning, and actions were all the result of “animal spirits”—mysterious, unknowable vapors that swirled through cavities in our head and traveled through our bodies.” (Zimmer, p. 38)
It was the 17th century British scientist Thomas Willis who recognized that the custard like tissue of the brain was where our mental world existed. The brain is an electric organ. Now we know that instead of animal spirits, voltage spikes travel through it and out into the body’s nervous system.
Scientists are motivated for the need to understand the brain to explain neurological diseases such as Autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Schizophrenia, and many more. The cure to many of these may just be found hidden in the brain. Could it really be just simple as rewiring the brain or replacing defective or missing parts? The
In Allan Jones’s presentation, A Map of the Brain, he explains his current project and why is essential to the modern day. Jones first starts off by giving the audience some background information about the brain. He states that the brain is a complex organ that receives around twenty percent of the blood from our hearts as well as twenty percent of the oxygen from our lungs. Jones explains that the brain is essential to the body because it controls everything we do. Even though the brain is very complex, it does not mean that it is not organized and structured. In the past century, scientists have created a blue stain that stains neuron bodies. This showed scientists that neurons were unevenly distributed throughout the brain depending on
Going back to the gray matter, the outer layer of gray matter is the frontal cortex. This is where we make decisions and where we do much of our conscious and complicated thinking. Phineas Gage, a renowned neuroscience patient in the 1800, was hit with a iron rod to the head, yet minutes after he was still able to move and act normal (Fleischman 6). The only thing was that he could not make decisions. When given a $1000 for the pebbles he collected, he angrily refused the deal( 19). He was not able to make the decision of getting the money or not. Neuroscientists have learned so much of the brain that has helped us understand our own brains and the people around us. From this scientist learned that the sections of the brain had parts and functions such as language and comprehension(65). Lastly they learned about germs and that you need to make sure to disinfect your tools(17). Without this our technology that is here would not be as progressed if we did not know this. All of these components helped us understand the teen brain just a little bit
In the article titled, “Secrets of the Brain” published in the February 2014 issue of National Geographic, we learn that there have been many advances in understanding the inner workings of our brains. One of the leading scentists, Van Weeden, is working hard to understand the connections that occur within our heads.
Many researchers have sought out an explanation for the mysteries hidden within our brain and how it operates. Recent studies have shown that the brain functions more as a muscle allowing it to continue to grow or contract. If these studies prove to be true, this could forever change how people interact or associate with their brains.
Your brain is a very powerful thing. It controls everything about you. Your thoughts, your actions, your emotions. Everything we see, feel and do are actions of our brain. Our brains are the most complex things in this world. They start to develop at just 4 weeks in the womb. They form more connections then stars in the sky. In the Pbs series “The Secret life of the Brain” they divide your brains life into 5 parts, the babies brain, the child’s brain, the teenage brain, the adult brain and the aging brain.
This weeks reading discussed the brain and many complicated factors that go along with it. The brain has been an important area of study for decades and there are many different perspectives when it comes to how it works. Brain imaging, like what is discussed in the reading provided by Dr. Gordon Rose entitled "Postcards From the Brain" has shown us more information about how the brain works, but it has also led to many perspectives related to how consciousness works, and hard versus easy problems in the brain. It debates whether hard problems even exist. Furthermore, the reading provided, also describes language in a baby's brain, how mimicry works, and disorders throughout human development. These sections all involve slightly different perspectives when it comes to how our mind works.
The brain is not fully understood yet. Therefore, we do not know everything about consciousness and cannot explain it yet. Physicalist suggest that neurons interact with each other and this is what produces consciousness. Today we know more about the brain, and how it functions, then we did in the 19th century. Scientist can watch brain activity of a person by attaching wires to their head.
Research is playing with puzzles, making sense of the nonsensical piece by piece. What’s a greater puzzle than the brain? In middle school, to procrastinate, I watched videos on why we dream, why we feel, why we forget. The more I saw, the more I wanted to know. So, in high school, I enrolled in AP psychology. When I read the syllabus, my stomach cartwheeled at knowing I would have to dissect a sheep brain. As I reluctantly walked into the lab, the fresh formaldehyde smell battered my nostrils. Little tool kits of torture were lined up on every table. While the rest of my group used them to emphatically scissor away, I simply observed, hands paralyzed to my side. Then, the teacher commanded each of us look at the hippocampus. When I picked up the grooved grey blob, I realized my slightly shaking forceps held most of that sheep’s knowledge, memories, and
After that discovery, the brain became a bit of an obsession. I've always been fascinated by how people think, and wondered what the underlying structures of cognition and memory are. I think my obsession started after reading, "How We Learn" by Benedict Carey. I was so intrigued by the counterintuitive methods of learning he proposed. Since then, I’ve read extensively in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. One book that was particularly influential for me was Norman Doidge’s “The Brain’s Way of Healing;” which introduced me to neuroplasticity. His book made me realize the incredible potential for research in neuroscience. How everyone can benefit from it, especially the 1 in 6 of the world’s population that suffer from neurological
When it comes to the human body, there is still much that we do not know about the brain. However, several recent scientific advancements are working on rectifying that; 3-D imaging, fMRI’s, making brains translucent, identifying proteins and structure, and several other discoveries or tools are working together to unlock the brain. People have long been asking questions about the brain, such as how neurons communicate and bond with each other, if they can distinguish between unhealthy and healthy brains based on differences between the two, and if it is possible to bring movement (of a sort) to the paralyzed or quadriplegic. Much of the motivation behind understanding the brain is the hope that illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, autism, and schizophrenia
LP2 Assignment: Secrets of the Mind Student: Kathryn Crandall National American University Date: December 12, 2015 Upon viewing the documentary “Secrets of the Mind” presented by NOVA, seemed more like mysteries of the brain. In this documentary, Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, who is a neuroscientist that is often known as the “Sherlock Holmes of neuroscience”, due to that he literally is a brain detective. He is also the director of the Center for the Brain and Cognition and Professor with the Psychology Department and Neuroscience Program at the University of California, as well as, Adjunct Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute in San Diego, Ca.
chose to research the area of psychology - advances in neuroscience. This topic really fascinates me because the brain is so complex and there is so much to still be discovered. In the article Secrets of the Brain, John Donoguhe, a neuroscientist wanted to find a way to help people with paralysis by tapping into the signals from their motor cortex which is the region of the brain where we generate commands to move our muscles. He spent years developing an implant and testing the device on monkeys. In 2005 surgeons successfully installed this device on a woman named Cathy Hutchinson who had suffered a massive stroke leaving her unable to move or speak. Two years after the initial surgery they connected a robotic arm to the computers which allowed
I am Lucero Castaneda, a First Year student at the UT majoring in Neuroscience. I was searching for undergraduate research opportunities in Eureka and I found yours. As you know, the brain is an outstanding organ that numerous scientists would like to understand but can't easily do so. For example, if the brain can't feel pain, then why do we get headaches? What happens to our brain when we're sleep deprived or experience sleep paralysis? Or how can our brain remember certain events more than others and why do emotions make most living organisms act a certain way? I would really enjoy listening to possible answers to these questions or at least some theories that you or your students might have. I would appreciate the chance to talk with you about your research on how the birth of
It is clear at this point that we are irrevocably tied to the 3-lb of strange computational material found within our skulls. The brain is utterly alien to us, and yet our personalities, hopes, fears and aspirations all depend on the integrity of this biological tissue. How do we know this? Because when the brain changes, we change. Our personality, decision-making, risk-aversion, the capacity to see colours or name animals – all these can change, in very specific ways, when the brain is
The human brain is a mystery that has been studied for centuries in attempt to understand how it functions. Scientists first thought that the brain was a structure that functioned a whole. It was in the early 1600’s where the first ideas of localisation of function in the brain started. At this time Rene Descartes discovered a tiny structure called the pineal