The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience

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We tend to assume that our models of the brain are correct. For example, we “instinctively” think of the brain as separate from the body, the seat of consciousness, as a computer, and as a collection of neurons; we “instinctively” think that what the brain does is think (Cobb’s argument), or remember, or create consciousness. Cobb documents that each of these ways of understanding the brain are relatively modern and incomplete—not instinctive or obvious at all.

About modern drugs and how we don't know how they work. Kinda boring to be fair even though it's full of info. This dense yet approachable tome from Matthew Cobb delivers exactly on the promise of its title, giving a complete history of how humans have attempted to understand the most complex thing in the universe, the human brain. The dependence on metaphor with current technology is an interesting recurrence and though approaches a more accurate and graspable notion, never really does justice to the subject at hand. Di Liegro CM, Schiera G, Proia P, Di Liegro I. Physical activity and brain health. Genes (Basel). 2019;10(9):720. doi:10.3390/genes10090720 Anand KS, Dhikav V. Hippocampus in health and disease: An overview. Ann Indian Acad Neurol. 2012;15(4):239-46. doi:10.4103/0972-2327.104323Ultimately, it would not matter if there was no deep understanding of how those therapies work, as long as they do." Fama R, Sullivan EV. Thalamic structures and associated cognitive functions: Relations with age and aging. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2015;54:29-37. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.03.008 It’s not the glorious old super theories explaining everything and using the very little old research they have. Now philosophers are afraid of making huge claims as we know how the brain DOESN’T work. Of course we still even now, in 2021, don’t understand how the brain works. So these bigshot philosophers trying to sound clever just sound like noise making machines. They also promise that brains will be recreated via programming.

The brain is a complex organ that controls all bodily processes, including thought, sensory perception, and physical action. Despite weighing only 3 pounds, the human brain contains as many as 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections.Galloping through centuries of wild speculation and ingenious, sometimes macabre anatomical investigations, scientist and historian Matthew Cobb reveals how we came to our present state of knowledge. Our latest theories allow us to create artificial memories in the brain of a mouse, and to build AI programmes capable of extraordinary cognitive feats. A complete understanding seems within our grasp. How modern philosophers describe consciousness. The definitions are frankly pointless to read about as it’s just random people with opinions. The split brain studies are interesting, but I know that already. This book is kinda basic.

The first part, "Past", is the longest and covers history from the period when the heart was considered to be behind thought and emotion, through to early neurosurgery and anatomy, right through to the discovery of neurons and electricity and many concepts which are still at the heart of neuroscience today. It contained a great deal that I didn't know alongside some that I did, and it was fascinating seeing how many fortuitous discoveries were made entirely by accident, or were made in error yet today would be seen as correct. There are many names, and to those totally unfamiliar with those mentioned the volume could be overwhelming, but it wouldn't be a complete history without them. There were also names you might not expect - amongst them Mary Shelley, whose novel Frankenstein was influential in popularising the idea that the nervous system uses electricity, and Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory but not a man typically linked to neuroscience. A century later, electricity was the fashionable thing, so natural philosophers began to theorise that perhaps the animal spirits sloshing around in the brain were in fact a kind of “electric fluid”. Perhaps, suggested one, the brain was very like a “galvanic battery”. By the mid-19th century, nerves were inevitably compared to telegraph wires and the brain to a completely electrical system. main job is to process information. But some experts argue that because brains are biological — they evolved within the vagaries of a body — they operate in ways that a machine doesn’t ( SN: 8/23/16).Malinowski, P., et al. (2017). Meditation and cognitive ageing: The role of mindfulness meditation in building cognitive reserve. Part three, "Future", is a brief exploration of where Cobb thinks research might go, and the many questions which remain unsolved. It looks at the flaws of current methodology and postulates how scientists might work past them. He makes some valid points, and whilst there are no easy answers, all neuroscientists should consider what he has to say. Jawabri KH, Sharma S. Physiology, cerebral cortex functions. In: StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing. Tyndall AV, Clark CM, Anderson TJ, Hogan DB, Hill MD, Longman RS, Poulin MJ. Protective effects of exercise on cognition and brain health in older edults. Exerc Sport Sci Rev. 2018;46(4):215-223. doi:10.1249/JES.0000000000000161 Because the effect of synaptic connections on brain activity was already precluded in Step 1 by imposing the replay, disconnecting the synapses either optogenetically or physically (in Step 2 and Step 3, respectively) has no further consequences on the firing of action potentials. Therefore, if the reader does not reject the hypothesis at the first step, why reject it in further steps (see further discussion in theories of consciousness)? Finally, we argued that if the participant consciously perceived the green light after the resective surgery (Step 3), it would imply that a scattered brain can be conscious.

Regarding the thought experiment presented here, however, placing an electrode at the cell body to generate the cellular output effectively bypasses the critical nexus point in the apical dendrite. We, therefore, predict that the replay of activity at the cell bodies of pyramidal cells would, in this case, completely entail the former influence of the apical dendrite. Furthermore, DIT is agnostic about the intrinsic necessity of apical causality, per se, versus the resultant firing activity at the cell body. In this respect, DIT does not inform us whether the brain is conscious under replay or whether scattered brains are conscious. Wie weit ist dieses Hirn-Feld, was wissen wir und was wissen wir noch nicht? Auf was sollten wir in Zukunft einen Augenmerk werfen, damit wir beispielsweise Menschen mit ernsthaften Erkrankungen helfen können. 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. Macdonald K, Germine L, Anderson A, Christodoulou J, Mcgrath LM. Dispelling the Myth: Training in Education or Neuroscience Decreases but Does Not Eliminate Beliefs in Neuromyths. Front Psychol. 2017;8:1314. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01314 Liederman J. The dynamics of interhemispheric collaboration and hemispheric control. Brain Cogn. 1998;36(2):193-208. doi: 10.1006/brcg.1997.0952What's more, the brain is not in a jar, it is integrated into the organism. To study what the brain does and how it does it, one should work to understand the entire organism. For thousands of years, thinkers and scientists have tried to understand what the brain does. Yet, despite the astonishing discoveries of science, we still have only the vaguest idea of how the brain works. In The Idea of the Brain, scientist and historian Matthew Cobb traces how our conception of the brain has evolved over the centuries. Although it might seem to be a story of ever-increasing knowledge of biology, Cobb shows how our ideas about the brain have been shaped by each era's most significant technologies. Today we might think the brain is like a supercomputer. In the past, it has been compared to a telegraph, a telephone exchange, or some kind of hydraulic system. What will we think the brain is like tomorrow, when new technology arises? The result is an essential read for anyone interested in the complex processes that drive science and the forces that have shaped our marvelous brains.