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- - 2355 - The Brain - it is what makes you you. - What was your memory just before you became conscious of it? What is consciousness anyway? Is consciousness something that resides at the molecular level, at the cellular level, at the neural circuit level, or at some higher organizational level in our brain? It still remains unbelievable that consciousness can be created from mindless little neurons.
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---------------------------- - 2355 - The Brain - it is what makes you you.
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- Who are we?
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- Are we our brain?
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- Our eyes do not see without it. Our nose does not smell. Our ears do not hear. Our skin does not feel pain. These are our sensors. What we actually experience from our sensors all happens in our brain.
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- On a dark, starry night look at all the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. All those stars that you can see plus all those stars that you can not see in our Galaxy are less that the number of neurons in your brain.
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- Our brains are the most complex objects you will find in the Universe. It only weighs 3 pounds but it is more complex than anything else you can find out there.
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- Neurons are the brain cells. Axons are the wires in the brain that carry electrical impulses between the brain cells. The electrical signals they carry then release chemical signals in the brain. It is this chemistry that makes us think.
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- Chemicals can get complicated enough that they can look inside themselves, understand what they see, and marvel at the very fact that they even exist.
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- Better living through chemistry.
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- The millisecond electrical signals are voltage spikes that occur along the axons between the neurons. The spikes mean different things to different places in the brain at different times. More spikes usually mean more heat, or louder sound, or a stronger muscle contraction.
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- But, a single neuron may receive inputs form 10,000 other neurons. It is the entire population of a group of neurons that gives us value judgments, predictions of the future, reminiscence, and the desire for sex or food.
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- The neurons are not the only thing in the act either. We really don’t understand the roles of glial cells. There are 10 of them for every one neuron. Then, there are the biochemical cascades that occur inside each cell. The complexity of all this is more then our best chemistry can understand, so far.
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- By reading this review and learning new facts you are making PHYSICAL CHANGES in the structure of your brain. Unless you are one of those people the don’t have a firing synapse in your head this is what happens.
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- Synapses are the tiny connections between the brain cells. The strange thing about memory in the brain is that it appears to record the relationship between things and not the things themselves. You can sing a melody because you remember the relationship between the notes and not the notes themselves.
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- A resting brain uses 20% of the bodies total oxygen. 3 pounds is only 2% of the body’s mass but it is burning 20% of the energy when it is at rest.
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- The emulation of possible futures is a key activity of a resting brain. This allows our “hypotheses to die in our stead.” We think it through before we act. Our memories are the tools we use to make good predictions of what will happen in the future.
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- Emotions seem to employ largely unconscious machinery in the brain. Basic emotions are remarkably similar across all the animal species. I myself hope to become the man my dog thinks I am.
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- Most of the animal species are “hard-wired” to solve particular problems. Somehow, our human brains have the ability to go into the abstract and solve open ended problems.
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- If you snap your fingers in front of your eyes you will see the snap 30 milliseconds faster than your ears hear the snap. But, when the brain processes it , it makes them both simultaneous.
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- Your brain takes your senses and interprets them as it thinks things ought to happen. What happens to the 80 milliseconds of darkness that occurs whenever you blink your eyes? Your brain chooses not to register that.
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- Look into a mirror at you left eye. Now, your right eye. Your eye movements take time but you do not see your eyes move. Your brain is managing time the way it think things should happen, not the way they do happen.
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- Animals deprived of sleep for 10 days die. All animals need sleep. Why? Is sleep rest and a chance for the brain’s restoration? But, the brain remains highly active during sleep. With our dreams you can actually see things with our eyes closed.
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- Is the brain running models, or simulations, in preparation for the next day’s activities? Maybe the brain is reorganizing your memory putting things where they need to be and throwing away unnecessary information during sleep? Sleep may be an off-line practice session for the brain to figure things out before you actually get to do them?
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- In that case sleep is a learning process. Maybe you can learn something by sleeping on your text books??? These are all questions because science really does not know why we sleep. But, we know we need it.
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- What was your memory just before you became conscious of it? What is consciousness anyway? Is consciousness something that resides at the molecular level, at the cellular level, at the neural circuit level, or at some higher organizational level in our brain?
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- Maybe that organizational level has a massive feedback circuit that produces our consciousness? It still remains unbelievable that consciousness can be created from mindless little neurons.
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- Regardless, the brain is what makes us human. And, your brain is what makes you you. Be careful what you feed it. Hopefully this Review is good for your brain?
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- May 6, 2019. 801
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--------------------- Monday, May 6, 2019 -------------------------
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