The Idea of the Brain: A History: SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2020

Product Information

To underscore the usefulness of replay as a potential experimental strategy, let us compare the replay of brain activity to a detailed simulation of the brain. A frequent objection to the view that a detailed simulation of the human brain can become conscious is that it merely manipulates symbols whose meaning depends on external interpretation, whereas neural activity is intrinsically meaningful to the brain [ 88]. In contrast to a simulation, the artificial neuronal firing induced by the replay is intrinsically meaningful to the brain/participant because it is an identical copy of intrinsically meaningful activity (i.e., an experience of green light). John Searle famously explained that “you could not digest pizza by running the program that simulates such digestion” [ 89]. Unlike biologically detailed simulations running on a computer, the replay is recorded and activated on the same substrate. Therefore, in contrast to a simulation of the stomach, recording and then replaying smooth muscle contraction and enzyme secretion would result in digestion. What would it imply about the nature of consciousness if replay would work for stomach digestion or the heart pumping blood but not for the brain and consciousness? The chapter itself is about Darwin and other thinkers and how we started to search for similarities in animal brains. Brain centers are mentioned, but many deny them. Darwin’s theory is not used to research brain modules until much later. I assume he implies evolutionary psychology that appeared in the 1980's. It’s quite a slump for sure.

Nielsen, J. A., et al. (2013). An evaluation of the left-brain vs. right-brain hypothesis with resting state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging. The ancients believed the heart was the anatomical seat of thought and consciousness and considered the brain to be of relative little import.Aghjayan, S. L., et al. (2022). Aerobic exercise improves episodic memory in late adulthood: a systematic review and meta-analysis. We are getting into the actual science and not just loose philosophy. Now people are looking into animal brains and even studying people who have brain injuries in certain parts of the brain. Which makes scientists like Broca find brain areas responsible for certain instincts like the language center. Even on the purely scientific side, I felt that big chunks of neuroscience were missing, conveniently left out when they didn't suit. For example, reducing the whole idea of brain chemistry to a big, biased rant about psychedelics and later mental health made me want to throw the book at a wall. Another one was using the chapter on localization to discuss the mistakes in fMRI research, while at the same time using it to make an entirely unnecessary and random stab at the debate around gender differences in the brain. While also conveniently forgetting there's more to human neuroscience than fMRI and PET. In the latter part of the 19th century, evolution came into the picture. The argument was that differences in mental capacities between species were a matter of degree, not kind, which was best explained by common ancestry. Spiritualism also became popular, however, so that even some highly influential evolutionary biologists thought that at least some mental phenomena, such as consciousness, transcended the body, so that evolution was not a significant factor.

The experiment we described here is useful as a benchmark for theories of consciousness, revealing hidden incoherences and ambiguities [ 58]. Specifically, for a given theory of consciousness, we ask in which step (i.e., Steps 1 to 3) and why we would reject the working hypothesis and claim that the participant loses consciousness. Shen HH. Inner workings: Discovering the split mind. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2014;111(51):18097. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1422335112

Need Help?

And although the advances we have seen in the past 50 years have been breathtaking to put it mildly. The chapter feels like a summary of a ton of docs and ideas I've read before. Yet it's kinda dry. I rather read a more fun intro to this stuff. And if you watch docs on brain studies you already know most of this. Answering “no” after the resective surgery ( Fig 3A and 3B) challenges the reader to explain why, although the synaptic disconnection at a molecular scale in Step 2 ( Fig 2) does not change the conscious perception, the physical disconnection with a surgical scalpel nevertheless changes the participant’s conscious perception. Answering “yes” after surgically cutting the visual cortex ( Fig 3A) but “no” after its removal ( Fig 3B) implies that the distance of the resected neurons from the rest of the brain is vital for conscious perception. The distinction between surgery with ( Fig 3A) and without the removal ( Fig 3B) of the visual cortex raises interesting questions regarding the effect of the distance between brain regions on consciousness. For example, does the brain’s size (between species and even within the same species) affect consciousness due to the distance between brain regions?

looking ahead to what the future might hold. The possibilities include the creation of conscious machines, or even having to Cobb explores the fact that we are almost certainly at the edge of the use value of the computer metaphor.

Article contents

It’s a fine enough intro for beginners. A book about how various generations understood the brain. It’s largely loose philosophy with hundreds of names and mini stories about people focusing on how they felt and thought about the world. It’s all focused on personal ideas, but most didn’t stand the test of time and even the modern ones are not as scientific as most other research fields. Wagner MJ, Kim TH, Savall J, Schnitzer MJ, Luo L. Cerebellar granule cells encode the expectation of reward. Nature. 2017;544(7648):96-100. doi:10.1038/nature21726 If the reader answers “yes” in Step 3, then a second resection or any number of additional resections should not change the reader’s answer. Iteratively resecting and re-resecting eventually leaves us with a brain in the form of geographically scattered individual neurons. Therefore, accepting the hypothesis in Step 3 results in a conscious scattered brain. The alternative, namely, arguing that scattered brains cannot be conscious, leads to rejecting the hypothesis that the firing of the neurons causes our conscious experience. The brain processes information it receives through its neuron network and sends signals to all parts of the body to control bodily functions and respond to stimuli The left and right sides of the brain.