The Nervous System
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Lateralization
Is it time to move past the idea that our brain is like a computer?
I am not very well-versed, but I think the way that AI researchers were enamoured with computers and their superficial parallels with minds may well be responsible for the rather unimpressive amount of progress that has been made in the field. For instance, a lot of time is spent thinking about rigid hierarchical systems in, for instance, formal logic (I'm also peripherally aware that this has been a common approach in linguistics, too). They try to analyse these systems and extend them, and even talk about philosophical consequences (regarding theorems of completeness and such). But having studied formal logic in some depth, it's pretty clear to me that this is totally the wrong approach. It's totally the wrong paradigm. No insights, let alone functioning intelligences, will ever come from systems like these.
NOVA | Magnetic Mind Control
How Does the Brain Work? PBS Airdate: September 14, 2011 NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Hi, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your host for NOVA scienceNOW, where this season, we're asking six big questions. On this episode: How Does the Brain Work? To find out, I head to Las Vegas, where brain researchers are placing their bets on magic.
Flip of a single molecular switch makes an old mouse brain young
Mar. 6, 2013 — The flip of a single molecular switch helps create the mature neuronal connections that allow the brain to bridge the gap between adolescent impressionability and adult stability. Now Yale School of Medicine researchers have reversed the process, recreating a youthful brain that facilitated both learning and healing in the adult mouse. Scientists have long known that the young and old brains are very different. Adolescent brains are more malleable or plastic, which allows them to learn languages more quickly than adults and speeds recovery from brain injuries.
The limbic system is a convenient way of describing several functionally and anatomically interconnected nuclei and cortical structures that are located in the telencephalon and diencephalon. These nuclei serve several functions, however most have to do with control of functions necessary for self preservation and species preservation. They regulate autonomic and endocrine function, particularly in response to emotional stimuli. They set the level of arousal and are involved in motivation and reinforcing behaviors.
Chapter 9: Limbic System
John R. Hesselink, MD, FACR The limbic lobe is a complex set of three C-shaped structures containing both gray and white matter. It lies deep within the brain and includes portions of all the lobes of the cerebral hemispheres.
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The New Map Of The Brain
Trying to map the brain has always been cartography for fools. Most of the other parts of the body reveal their workings with little more than a glance. The heart is self-evidently a pump; the lungs are clearly bellows. But the brain, which does more than any organ, reveals least of all. The 3-lb. lump of wrinkled tissue--with no moving parts, no joints or valves--not only serves as the motherboard for all the body's other systems but also is the seat of your mind, your thoughts, your sense that you exist at all. You have a liver; you have your limbs.
<img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-103478" title="rainbow-brain-map-science-aaas" src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/rainbow-brain-map-science-aaas-660x473.jpg" alt="" width="660" height="473" /> By Greg Miller, Science NOW To the unaided eye, the most striking feature of the human brain is its squiggly pattern of bumps and grooves.
Rainbow Brain Map Reveals Grid-Like Pattern | Wired Science
Sensory Mechanisms
Brainwaves and Entrainment