- 2786 - BRAIN - how does it work? How the brain works remains a puzzle with only a few pieces in place. Remember the brain is trying to figure out itself. Of these, one big piece is actually a conjecture: that there’s a relationship between the physical structure of the brain and how it functions. I’ve been thinking about that and here is what I have come up with.
-------------------------- 2786 - BRAIN - how does it work?
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- The brain’s jobs is interpreting touch, visual and sound inputs, as well as speech, reasoning, emotions, learning, fine control of movement to name a few jobs. Science assumes that it’s the brain’s anatomy with its hundreds of billions of nerve fibers that make all of these functions possible. The brain’s “living wires” are connected in elaborate neurological networks that give rise to human beings’ amazing abilities.
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- It would seem that if scientists can map the nerve fibers and their connections and record the timing of the impulses that flow through them for a higher function such as vision, they should be able to solve the question of how one sees.
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- Researchers are getting better at mapping the brain using “tractography” This is a technique that visually represents nerve fiber routes using 3D modeling. And scientists are getting better at recording how information moves through the brain by using enhanced functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure blood flow.
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- But in spite of these tools, no one seems much closer to figuring out how we even “see“ with our eyes sending signals to the brain. Neuroscience has only a rudimentary understanding of how it all fits together.
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- The overall goal of bioengineering research is to scientifically explain all these connections that activate different brain regions during cognitive tasks.
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- Electric near-field connections provide another level of communication within the brain. Cognitive functions such as reasoning and learning use a number of distinct brain regions in a time-sequenced manner. Anatomy alone with the neurons and nerve fibers cannot explain the excitation of these regions in the brain by themselves.
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- Some connections are actually “wireless.” These are electric near-field connections, and not the physical connections captured in ‘tract graphs“. A very simple analogy of what is going on in the brain is how a wireless router works. The internet is delivered to a router via a wired connection. The router then sends the information to your laptop using wireless connections. The overall system of information transfer works because of both wired and wireless connections work together.
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- Electric fields stem from charged particles flowing in and out of neurons at their uninsulated nodes. In the case of the brain, nerve cells conduct electrical impulses down long threadlike arms called axons from the cell body to other neurons.
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- Along the way, wireless signals are naturally emitted from uninsulated portions of nerve cells. These spots that lack the protective insulation that wraps the rest of the axon are called nodes of “Ranvier“.
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- The nodes of Ranvier allow charged ions to diffuse in and out of the neuron, propagating the electrical signal down the axon. As the ions flow in and out, electric fields are generated. The intensity and structure of these fields depends on the activity of each nerve cell.
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- Investigations into how excited brain regions match up with cognitive functions make another mistake when they rely on assumptions that lead to overly simple models. Researchers tend to model the relationship as linear with a single variable, measuring the average size of a single brain region’s response.
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- Most living things do not have sensing systems that respond in a “linear“, one-to-one manner to stimuli. Linear models assume that if the input to a system is doubled, the output of that system will also be doubled. This is not true of nonlinear models, where many output values can exist for single value of the input. And most scientists agree that neural computations are in fact nonlinear.
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- A crucial question in understanding the link between brain and behavior is how the brain decides the best course of action among competing alternatives. For example, the frontal cortex of the brain makes optimal choices by computing many quantities, or variables, calculating the potential payoff, the probability of success and the cost in terms of time and effort. Since the system is nonlinear, doubling the potential payoff may make a final decision much more than twice as likely.
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- The flow of information through the brain is much more complex and dynamic than a 2D model can adequately represent. Linear models miss out on the rich variety of possibilities that can occur in brain function, especially those beyond what anatomical structure would suggest. It’s like the difference between a 2D and 3D representation of the world around us.
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- Current linear models just describe the average level of excitation in a brain region, or the flow across a brain surface. That’s much less information than nonlinear models from both enhanced functional magnetic resonance imaging and electric near-field bioimaging data.
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- Diagramming all the brain’s nonphysical links using recent advances in electric near-field mapping, and employing what we believe are biologically realistic many-variable nonlinear models, will get us one step closer to where we want to go. To learn how we learn.
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- Better understanding of the brain will not only reduce the need for invasive operating procedures to correct malfunctions, it will also lead to better models for what the brain does best: computation, memory, networking and information distribution.
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- Our brains obviously have a lot more to learn.
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-------------------------- Other Reviews available to learn how your brain works:
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- 2755 - BRAIN - be thankful for your brain? It took 1.5 million years of evolution. How did it get to be as good as it gets. You may be surprised at the answer.
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- 2423 - BRAIN - how the Brain Works? Research on Huntington’s, Parkinson’s , Alzheimer’s and Epilepsy has shown that throughout life the brain does try to repair itself through the production of new brain cells. If the brain cells stopped growing in adults, you have what you got. So truth be told the brain is trying to understand itself. Here is a little more to learn about what your brain is doing.
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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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- 2199 - The human brain, is a challenge for physics to explain down to the level of quantum mechanics. At the same time into meta physics and deep into philosophy. (Metaphysics = abstract theory with no basis in reality.) We are navigating the narrow path between solid ground and the edge of a swamp.
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- 1999 - Success in life is a mindset. So is raising or teaching kids. . The mindset is believing you can improve with practice and hard work rather than thinking that talent is something fixed. The growth mindset is what makes a difference in a kid’s education. Learn about the Pygmalion Effect. Everyone is a teacher whether they realize it or not.
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- 1998 - Understanding Yourself - The Remarkable Brain. If the brain were simple enough to understand we would all be too simple to figure it out. Serotonin is the brain’s “ don’t worry “, happy chemical. Noradrenalin is a biochemical providing the opposite effect of serotonin. Moral lessons from Mom and Dad infuse morality into your brain. . Regardless of our environment, or our situation, our human brain can always choose how to respond to it.
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- 1403 - How to become an athlete? To become a good athlete use your brain. First you better understand how your brain works. The trick is to practice to where your brain is doing the thinking for you and you hit the ball without even realizing what you are doing.
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- 1405 - How does the brain become a mind and create consciousness? Human brains have figured out how the Sun shines, how life evolved from a single cell, why apples fall. Our brains have built telescopes that see the galaxies as far back as the beginning of time. We have built microscopes that see the contours of a single atom. but, we have not figured our how the brain can possible do these things. How are we even conscious that we are doing them
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- 1024 - Brainology Mindset. Dr. Carol Dweck is a psychologist who maintains that success in life is a mindset. It is not luck. It is not genius. It is believing you can improve with practice and hard work rather than thinking that talent in something fixed. The growth mindset is what makes a difference in a kid’s education
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- 922 - Understanding yourself. The Remarkable Brain. If the brain were simple enough to understand we would all be too simple to figure it out. The brain gets it complexity from having many parts, each having a specialized function. It gets its complexity from the communications network that coordinates all of the parts through biochemical means. It gets its complexity through evolving throughout a lifetime and over many lifetimes. This review will help you understand not only yourself but your kids.
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- 868 - Seeing with ½ your brain. You may think thinking is hard, but seeing is harder. Visualization uses more than ½ your brain. While you are sitting down reading this review your brain is using 33% of the oxygen that you breath. When you are sitting and reading you are burning 33% of the calories your body has consumed. A total of 1/6 of what you eat gets used by your brain. And, if you worry a lot the ratio goes up.
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- August 2, 2020 2786
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