I don't know if notion of survival is just staying alive. I am not comfortable with the idea that likes and dislikes are solely a consequence of human's effort to survive.
Perceptual paradox to learned behavior?
Please listen me out. This is what i was thinking..
Tomato Curry:
To date, i like almost all curries with tomato as their base to a medium degree and my senses develop a kind of affinity towards consuming it. Lets think of a mental experiment which would make me dislike tomato curry, given my present state of brain. I am assuming that would be a paradox to my learned status quo. Lets say, i have been presented a dish which i have never tasted before. And tomato being its main ingredient as the base curry and it also looks like that. Well, I got an OK from the visual perception of the curry and developed a prediction in my brain of its high probability to satisfy my taste buds similar to my previous experiences.
Well, upon tasting it ,say, its horrible to an unimaginable degree. Now, how would i explain this to myself.
1. Will i now conclude that ALL the dishes which have tomato curry as their base are BAD from now on?. ( this apparently is a characteristic quality of women towards entire human race. Jumping to conclusions contrary to common sense and with all the confidence on earth!!)
2. Will i attach hatred towards that particular ingredient which overwhlemed tomato base and still have my liking towards dishes with tomato curries intact in my brain?
Most likely, it would be the second explanation and if thats the case this experiment did not suceed in making me develop a dislike towards well established liking towards tomato curry.
The key question is, why did this experiment fail?.
Now lets redo the same experiment with some hypothetical constraints. Lets not change anything with my learned behavior. But instead, lets eliminate existence of all dishes with tomato curry except the one which i am going to taste. So, the initial condition of this experiment is that my brain does not have any memory traces of the existence of all the other tomato curries but somehow still have the 'learned' liking. My reaction would be same but what would be the explanation??
This time i may most likely find the first explanation and i may dislike tomato curry from now on.
Instead of eliminating the existence of tomato curry based dishes through which i established liking, lets say, they do exist but there is no way i can bring them to my dining table. The only option i have is this horrible dish. In that case, i think, helpless denial to human brain of the reality that i cannot bring the 'likable' dishes to the table. Under this circumstances, i expect the possibilty of plasticity in the learned behavior. This again is a consequence of survival but does not quite fit the evolutionary perception of survival.
Am i thinking right? Rajat
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Rajat's Question
As far as I know we are not born with an intrinsic sense of morality.
Morals come under the category of learned behavior to a great extent and are directly linked to our tendency to survive.
Any biological entity we see today is a product of evolution. The ones that we don't see evolved as well...but they did not evolve well enough to be here anymore. The fittest survived and the rest perished.
Now we need to remember that we don't guide evolution consciously, it happens to everyone and some get lucky while the others don't as they face newer ecological situations.
Now lets talk about ourselves and the human brain. We tend to have a very complicated picture of the brain and its workings because of the complex social and cultural processing that it achieves and we are aware of...
However when looked at from an evolutionary angle it has a relatively basic purpose...to survive. We for the most part have not developed cannibalistic tendencies because our brain is developed enough to know that it is not a fruitful outcome in terms of what its other desires are.
We are a species that wants to see future generations thrive. We have a herd type tendency where not only our own but to a certain extent other members of our species should benefit as well.
When we see a person being attacked by a bear we will not go and help the bear or even feel like it because we have a greater affinity for our own species than the other (this is getting a little complicated now because one might not feel like helping the other person if he/she is a potential threat or competitor for mating purposes! It is therefore important to keep these situations at bay for a while)
Anyway..Back to morals...We developed a brain that was suddenly capable of much more than what it needed to survive (or maybe it did need all that to survive... I'm again a little confused about this). We started manipulating our environment to a much greater extent than any other specie to suit our needs. When we say that there is a center for morals it is fallacious because as such there is nothing that tells us to do one thing over the other unless it is directly related to our survival and reproductive instincts. Morals are a by product of the interaction between these instincts and the society/culture/civilization that we developed. For matters to remain relatively conducive for survival it is important that we adhere to the morals and the other guidelines of society.
Free will definitely exists (which has been so scientifically proven by the Matrix trilogy!)
Our likes and dislikes may or may not have an actual source in the brain where it gets influenced by our learned behavior. What I want to know is whether there is a "perceptual" paradox that conflicts with the "learned behavior" or not.
One of things that I have trouble with whenever I've described this question before is that it is so hard to explain...
I'm not prying into normal behavior nor is this exactly connected to morals. It is a very basic question and frankly i wonder why no one has ever thought about this before (or maybe someone has...who knows!?)
I need to clear my head and rewrite my initial post so that it would become clearer...:P
Morals come under the category of learned behavior to a great extent and are directly linked to our tendency to survive.
Any biological entity we see today is a product of evolution. The ones that we don't see evolved as well...but they did not evolve well enough to be here anymore. The fittest survived and the rest perished.
Now we need to remember that we don't guide evolution consciously, it happens to everyone and some get lucky while the others don't as they face newer ecological situations.
Now lets talk about ourselves and the human brain. We tend to have a very complicated picture of the brain and its workings because of the complex social and cultural processing that it achieves and we are aware of...
However when looked at from an evolutionary angle it has a relatively basic purpose...to survive. We for the most part have not developed cannibalistic tendencies because our brain is developed enough to know that it is not a fruitful outcome in terms of what its other desires are.
We are a species that wants to see future generations thrive. We have a herd type tendency where not only our own but to a certain extent other members of our species should benefit as well.
When we see a person being attacked by a bear we will not go and help the bear or even feel like it because we have a greater affinity for our own species than the other (this is getting a little complicated now because one might not feel like helping the other person if he/she is a potential threat or competitor for mating purposes! It is therefore important to keep these situations at bay for a while)
Anyway..Back to morals...We developed a brain that was suddenly capable of much more than what it needed to survive (or maybe it did need all that to survive... I'm again a little confused about this). We started manipulating our environment to a much greater extent than any other specie to suit our needs. When we say that there is a center for morals it is fallacious because as such there is nothing that tells us to do one thing over the other unless it is directly related to our survival and reproductive instincts. Morals are a by product of the interaction between these instincts and the society/culture/civilization that we developed. For matters to remain relatively conducive for survival it is important that we adhere to the morals and the other guidelines of society.
Free will definitely exists (which has been so scientifically proven by the Matrix trilogy!)
Our likes and dislikes may or may not have an actual source in the brain where it gets influenced by our learned behavior. What I want to know is whether there is a "perceptual" paradox that conflicts with the "learned behavior" or not.
One of things that I have trouble with whenever I've described this question before is that it is so hard to explain...
I'm not prying into normal behavior nor is this exactly connected to morals. It is a very basic question and frankly i wonder why no one has ever thought about this before (or maybe someone has...who knows!?)
I need to clear my head and rewrite my initial post so that it would become clearer...:P
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Does 'free' will exist in its complete sense?
Although the title seems to be philosophical, i am trying to see the big picture of your thought process. Over the course of evolution and towards the sole purpose of survival, human brain has attached certain significance or emotion to living or non-living things based on logical or illogical reasons. Repetitive occurrence of similar set of neurological sequence of events in human brain over ages might have given birth to so called morals.( I am not sure if morals is the right word to use). Lets for a moment accept our brain has something like a set of morals. Now, i think 'likes' or 'dislikes'; 'good ' or 'bad' involves a deciding process based on these morals. I think there is an event in the brain which involves comparison with the morals before we come to a conclusion whether it is likable or not.
I think being consistent with this process of decision making is considered as 'normal' behavior.
Now if i am not wrong, you trying to understand, what makes people to inconsistent to what is generally considered to be normal?. What might be happening in the brain? Is the part of the brain regarding morals being conquered by something else?
Rajat, make it more scientific..keep it going
SA
I think being consistent with this process of decision making is considered as 'normal' behavior.
Now if i am not wrong, you trying to understand, what makes people to inconsistent to what is generally considered to be normal?. What might be happening in the brain? Is the part of the brain regarding morals being conquered by something else?
Rajat, make it more scientific..keep it going
SA
Friday, December 19, 2008
Hey Sreekant...
The point you make about emotion is valid and we could look into that, but from what I remember that angle has already been/is being looked into by people...It is something that can be tested and experimented on.
I am not exactly debating the definition of "like"...I was interested in understanding any hidden basis for our preferences, our likes and dislikes...any biological hard wire that guides us to chose one over the other...
An example that comes to my mind is that the fact that most people don't like things that are bitter. People have been working on this and found out that usually substances poisonous to us taste bitter. So its an evolutionary adaptation to have a natural aversion to things that taste that way. But of course there are bitter things that we eat, which to me is just because of the fact that humans have decided during the developmental course of civilization to explore wacky and previously untested substances for the palate. During this exploration we decided to make it a point to like certain things by forcing ourselves to eat them ...A case in point would be the "Bitter gourd" aka "karela"! :P
Lets keep this going ....glad you responded so quickly...
As i said earlier it would be futile to discuss these things without a basic knowledge of the brain...Lets get some more people in here...lets try harder this time...
The point you make about emotion is valid and we could look into that, but from what I remember that angle has already been/is being looked into by people...It is something that can be tested and experimented on.
I am not exactly debating the definition of "like"...I was interested in understanding any hidden basis for our preferences, our likes and dislikes...any biological hard wire that guides us to chose one over the other...
An example that comes to my mind is that the fact that most people don't like things that are bitter. People have been working on this and found out that usually substances poisonous to us taste bitter. So its an evolutionary adaptation to have a natural aversion to things that taste that way. But of course there are bitter things that we eat, which to me is just because of the fact that humans have decided during the developmental course of civilization to explore wacky and previously untested substances for the palate. During this exploration we decided to make it a point to like certain things by forcing ourselves to eat them ...A case in point would be the "Bitter gourd" aka "karela"! :P
Lets keep this going ....glad you responded so quickly...
As i said earlier it would be futile to discuss these things without a basic knowledge of the brain...Lets get some more people in here...lets try harder this time...
My views
Dear Rajat
I think i see your point. I would start to make a distinction which might contradict your discussion and still put us both on the same page. I think the perceptions are same but the emotions an individual attaches to what he/she perceives might be different.
Quoting from your previous post:
"While we have evolved for millions of years most of us are primed to "like" certain stimuli that our senses encounter for the purpose of survival but maybe in a fraction those wires got mixed up a bit and now we see deviant behavior every now and then"
Are you debating on the definition of 'like'?;
SA
I think i see your point. I would start to make a distinction which might contradict your discussion and still put us both on the same page. I think the perceptions are same but the emotions an individual attaches to what he/she perceives might be different.
Quoting from your previous post:
"While we have evolved for millions of years most of us are primed to "like" certain stimuli that our senses encounter for the purpose of survival but maybe in a fraction those wires got mixed up a bit and now we see deviant behavior every now and then"
Are you debating on the definition of 'like'?;
SA
Thursday, December 18, 2008
So I was "thinking" of something and wanted to share...
Hey everyone...
This platform is gathering a fair bit of dust from what I can see...
Anyway, this being a place to share thoughts on neuroscience and the brain I feel like sharing with everyone an idea I had a very long time back. I have shared this dilemma with a few people and wish to put it out here for you to mull over.
I was in Delhi going back home from college when I started wondering why people like one color over the other....and then some people just don't seem to have a strong preference for any particular hue.
I guess this is where the thought took birth and today wonder why I never extrapolated the idea to a more generic hypothesis on "the likes and dislikes" of people. Oh well, that is what we are here for...Maybe we could formulate one through a discussion here...
So here's what I conjured up...It would take a bit of imagining for everyone to understand the problem.
The question is how we perceive things. When I look at the sky on a clear day an image is formed at the back of my eye which is processed by the brain and when someone asks me the color of the sky I would tell him that its blue.
Why did I call it blue? The answer to begin with is not as simple as saying that the blue wavelength our eyes and we learned to call it blue when we were little kiddies. First of all the molecules in the atmosphere are more effective in scattering shorter wavelengths of the visible spectrum and secondly our eyes are more sensitive to perceiving the color blue than violet...
Anyway, I digress from the main point and therefore apologize. We in fact do wish to stick to wavelengths and the associated names of colors for our problem.
So, whenever an Electromagnetic wavelength of near 475 nm strikes the retina we percieve it as blue. Now when we see come across the 475 nm wavelength our brain creates the perception of blue and when asked some people say that they really like the color blue. Some on the other hand might say that they are not extremely fond of blue...Now why is that? One simple explanation could be that there is a negative association somewhere in the past that the person has made with the color blue and so they dont feel like its an awesome color ( I once ate a lot of onions and the hurled it all out in the middle of the night in a purple colored goo and ever since havent been quite fond of the color purple)...
There would be a number of psychological explanations that could answer my question and most people wouldn't bother much beyond them. But I wonder if we all see the same thing or perceive blue in the exact same fashion as everyone else?
Now I need you to imagine, What if when I look at a tree and see green and perceive it as green because that is what I was taught, but what if even though the exact same wavelength hits your eye and even though you call it green because the same stimuls has been universally named, you actually perceive it as the blue I see...
Now, stop for a second, I do not wish to rewrite the last paragraph and I'vetried explaining this scenario to others before in a very shoddy fashion so let me try again...I simply say, that what I perceive when I see blue could be your green, and your red could be yellow to me. So to me, when I see the sky I see a green colored sky according to you...and when I see a mustard field then i see what you would perceive as a red colored mustard field.
If by now you understand what I meant then it would be useful to give ne example of an actualy condition of the brain which could give some vagur validity to an otherwise crazy hypothesis.
Many of you might have heard of the condition called synesthesia or mixing of senses ( for more info check out the wikipedia site on synesthesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia)
In Synesthesia there are many manifestations but a commonly cited one is the lexical gustatory synesthesia where a person can taste a word from a spoken language by hearing it or even thinking of the word. As an example, the word "television" might evoke a taste of oranges! What is fascinating is that people with these conditions often do not realize that they have such a unique perception modality until they find out that others around then lack it...
Now why is this related. Simply because the fact that our perceptions are not the same...we might think that the feeling that is evoked when we look at the clear "blue" sky is the same in everyone, when this just might not be true.
Now when I relate this to the idea of "likes and dislikes" I suggest another small jounrey into your imagination. Imagine the sky was not what you perceived it to be right now. instead lets switch the colors a little. Imagine that the sky was brown and the trees and the grass was red and wood was bright canary yellow. Now would you like the color of the sky if it were red? I wouldnt? Too gaudy for me...
If you start thinking on these lines you would wonder if this is the reason why some people just hate certain objects or colors. Its a far fetched and I admit maniacal kind of suggestion but isnt it possible that there is some primeival center in our primate brain that guides likes and dislikes and if our perceptions are sligtly skewed then it could create a drift of sort in what would otherwise ought to be a universal perception for everyone...
I think at this point I would like to make a point clear that I think this might not be a condition in everyone. Most likely (again this is random and intuitive) 95% of the people have same perceptions and only a fraction of the problem displays a phenomenon similar to what I suggest. Like how there are homosexuals in the general human population. If there is a neurological basis for homosexuality then it is obvioulsy not being expressed in the majority of the population and is (excuse the expression all the liberals out there) an "aberration" of sorts. While we have evolved for millions of years most of us are primed to "like" certain stimuli that our senses encounter for the purpose of survival but maybe in a fraction those wires got mixed up a bit and now we see deviant behavior every now and then...
I am posting this right now without even relloking and revising because its getting a bit late and I should go to bed...But I'll come back and revise this first draft soon...In the meantime... for those who can bear with my first draft...leave comments...I'd be glad to hear what you think....After all even though this seems scientific it can take many directions during the course of a discussion...
I have been thinking about how one would test this hypothesis and have concluded that with current technology it is almost impossible...But if someone can figure out a simple and achievable method for experimentation then I might just start thinking of writing to DHHS for a grant to work on this :P
This platform is gathering a fair bit of dust from what I can see...
Anyway, this being a place to share thoughts on neuroscience and the brain I feel like sharing with everyone an idea I had a very long time back. I have shared this dilemma with a few people and wish to put it out here for you to mull over.
I was in Delhi going back home from college when I started wondering why people like one color over the other....and then some people just don't seem to have a strong preference for any particular hue.
I guess this is where the thought took birth and today wonder why I never extrapolated the idea to a more generic hypothesis on "the likes and dislikes" of people. Oh well, that is what we are here for...Maybe we could formulate one through a discussion here...
So here's what I conjured up...It would take a bit of imagining for everyone to understand the problem.
The question is how we perceive things. When I look at the sky on a clear day an image is formed at the back of my eye which is processed by the brain and when someone asks me the color of the sky I would tell him that its blue.
Why did I call it blue? The answer to begin with is not as simple as saying that the blue wavelength our eyes and we learned to call it blue when we were little kiddies. First of all the molecules in the atmosphere are more effective in scattering shorter wavelengths of the visible spectrum and secondly our eyes are more sensitive to perceiving the color blue than violet...
Anyway, I digress from the main point and therefore apologize. We in fact do wish to stick to wavelengths and the associated names of colors for our problem.
So, whenever an Electromagnetic wavelength of near 475 nm strikes the retina we percieve it as blue. Now when we see come across the 475 nm wavelength our brain creates the perception of blue and when asked some people say that they really like the color blue. Some on the other hand might say that they are not extremely fond of blue...Now why is that? One simple explanation could be that there is a negative association somewhere in the past that the person has made with the color blue and so they dont feel like its an awesome color ( I once ate a lot of onions and the hurled it all out in the middle of the night in a purple colored goo and ever since havent been quite fond of the color purple)...
There would be a number of psychological explanations that could answer my question and most people wouldn't bother much beyond them. But I wonder if we all see the same thing or perceive blue in the exact same fashion as everyone else?
Now I need you to imagine, What if when I look at a tree and see green and perceive it as green because that is what I was taught, but what if even though the exact same wavelength hits your eye and even though you call it green because the same stimuls has been universally named, you actually perceive it as the blue I see...
Now, stop for a second, I do not wish to rewrite the last paragraph and I'vetried explaining this scenario to others before in a very shoddy fashion so let me try again...I simply say, that what I perceive when I see blue could be your green, and your red could be yellow to me. So to me, when I see the sky I see a green colored sky according to you...and when I see a mustard field then i see what you would perceive as a red colored mustard field.
If by now you understand what I meant then it would be useful to give ne example of an actualy condition of the brain which could give some vagur validity to an otherwise crazy hypothesis.
Many of you might have heard of the condition called synesthesia or mixing of senses ( for more info check out the wikipedia site on synesthesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia)
In Synesthesia there are many manifestations but a commonly cited one is the lexical gustatory synesthesia where a person can taste a word from a spoken language by hearing it or even thinking of the word. As an example, the word "television" might evoke a taste of oranges! What is fascinating is that people with these conditions often do not realize that they have such a unique perception modality until they find out that others around then lack it...
Now why is this related. Simply because the fact that our perceptions are not the same...we might think that the feeling that is evoked when we look at the clear "blue" sky is the same in everyone, when this just might not be true.
Now when I relate this to the idea of "likes and dislikes" I suggest another small jounrey into your imagination. Imagine the sky was not what you perceived it to be right now. instead lets switch the colors a little. Imagine that the sky was brown and the trees and the grass was red and wood was bright canary yellow. Now would you like the color of the sky if it were red? I wouldnt? Too gaudy for me...
If you start thinking on these lines you would wonder if this is the reason why some people just hate certain objects or colors. Its a far fetched and I admit maniacal kind of suggestion but isnt it possible that there is some primeival center in our primate brain that guides likes and dislikes and if our perceptions are sligtly skewed then it could create a drift of sort in what would otherwise ought to be a universal perception for everyone...
I think at this point I would like to make a point clear that I think this might not be a condition in everyone. Most likely (again this is random and intuitive) 95% of the people have same perceptions and only a fraction of the problem displays a phenomenon similar to what I suggest. Like how there are homosexuals in the general human population. If there is a neurological basis for homosexuality then it is obvioulsy not being expressed in the majority of the population and is (excuse the expression all the liberals out there) an "aberration" of sorts. While we have evolved for millions of years most of us are primed to "like" certain stimuli that our senses encounter for the purpose of survival but maybe in a fraction those wires got mixed up a bit and now we see deviant behavior every now and then...
I am posting this right now without even relloking and revising because its getting a bit late and I should go to bed...But I'll come back and revise this first draft soon...In the meantime... for those who can bear with my first draft...leave comments...I'd be glad to hear what you think....After all even though this seems scientific it can take many directions during the course of a discussion...
I have been thinking about how one would test this hypothesis and have concluded that with current technology it is almost impossible...But if someone can figure out a simple and achievable method for experimentation then I might just start thinking of writing to DHHS for a grant to work on this :P
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Listen to this lecture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl2LwnaUA-k
One of many fascinating lectures by Dr.V S Ramachandran
One of many fascinating lectures by Dr.V S Ramachandran
What if we had
Here's something to think about
What if we had only simple neural networks such as the following
sensory axon--sensory neuron--inter-neuron synapses (sensory side)--inter-neuron--
inter-neuron synapses (motor side)--motor neuron--motor axon
Think of it this way
sensory neurons input the sensory information and motor neurons enable in the motion of body parts.
Now the question is:
is this enough?;
Can we survive if we only had such networks?;
How do you think one would behave with only these?
I think something is lacking, what do you think?
I think this discussion may help us in having a broad picture of the anatomy of brain
What if we had only simple neural networks such as the following
sensory axon--sensory neuron--inter-neuron synapses (sensory side)--inter-neuron--
inter-neuron synapses (motor side)--motor neuron--motor axon
Think of it this way
sensory neurons input the sensory information and motor neurons enable in the motion of body parts.
Now the question is:
is this enough?;
Can we survive if we only had such networks?;
How do you think one would behave with only these?
I think something is lacking, what do you think?
I think this discussion may help us in having a broad picture of the anatomy of brain
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Brain anatomy
http://www.psych.ualberta.ca/~ITL/brain/module1.htm
This link directs to a study module for various parts of the brain. This is a decent start for deeper understanding.
I would suggest to pick an interested part of the part and start deeper discussions. It would speed the learning process
This link directs to a study module for various parts of the brain. This is a decent start for deeper understanding.
I would suggest to pick an interested part of the part and start deeper discussions. It would speed the learning process
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Just Dormant
I apologize for the blog being dormant for so many days. I shall start discussions on brain anatomy very soon
SA
SA
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Summary of Lecture #1 and road map to understand it
Disclaimer: The summary posted in this blog is soley based on Dr.V.Ramachandran's first lectures in his series of BBC Reith lectures titled "Phantoms in the brain".
Salient Features:
The main theme of the lecture is understanding the functions of the parts of the brain by exploring various brain syndromes. This is facilitated by the fortunate fact that patients having syndromes bear leisons in specific parts of the brain with all other parts intact. By studying the peculiar behavior of the patient with a specific syndrome, one can reason out the function of that specific part of the brain. This is the main approach explained in this lecture.
Towards understanding of the various syndromes to be enumerated below with their broad definition, one must have thorough understanding of the basic fundamental unit of the brain, which is neuron, and the basic anatomy of the brain.
As a note: In the following posts, i will be exploring more about neurons and anatomy of the brain to grasp the following syndromes pointed out in this lecture.
Brain Syndromes:
#1) Prosopognosia or face blindness:
As the non-scientific name suggests, people having this syndrome cannot recognize faces of the people. This does not mean that these patients are blind. Even though they can visualize everything, they cannot recognize faces.
This syndrome leads to more fundamental discussion of vision. what is the process of vision? Praphrasing the same question, what are the complex series of events a brain undergoes for a human being to visualize things in everyday life which is taken for granted as a trivial task.
We will discuss abbout the process of vision in the coming posts.
#2) Capgras Syndrome:
This is quite an bizarre syndrome. Patients having this syndrome can very well recognize faces but CANNOT attach any emotional significance to that visual image. Quoting the same instance in the lecture, the patient upon seeing his mother can recognize that she is her mother but still not sure that she is as he could not feel any love and warmth which are associated with mother.
This syndrome leads to a very interesting discussion of how art is appreciated. How do people appreciate beauty?. For instance, different people have idiosyncratic measures of appreciating beauty of a woman, lets say, some get the emotion of infactuation upon seeing a woman with good superficial features (despite the fact that definition of 'good' is relativistic to the persons nutured opinions) even though she is perfect candidate for a devil.
#3) Phantom Limbs
The vivid feeling of an amputed limb by the patient is termed as phantom limb. He explores why does this happen?. The answer is explained based on brain maps being crosswired. We will discuss about this more after we have learned more about brain maps.
But the main consequential inference from the study of phantom limbs was rebuttal of the traditional notion that once the brain is developed in the feotus, it does not change over time. In other words, there is no possibility of plasticity in brain. He explains most fascinating exploitation of the discovery that brain indeed does undergo plasticity in curing patients to recover of stroke.
#4) Synesthesia
One of the most common and intersting syndrome is synesthesia. It is caused by mixing up of senses. Seeing colors when listening to specific tones like c# is red, F# is yellow. And also visual images of numbers are also associated with certain colors. This is again explained by crosswiring in the brain maps. We will explore this more after learning about brain maps.
The more interesting impact in understanding this syndrome is being able to find as explanation to the evolution of language. This is dealt in detail by Dr. Ramachandran in his other lectures. Let save this after we thoroughly understand this lecture.
#5) Pain Asymbolia
A patient with this syndrome laughs uncontrollable when inflicted by pain even though he can feel the pain. In his discussion, he lead to a most basic question that why do anybody laugh?. What is the definiton of laughter? What are the series events in the brain which lead to laughter?
These are syndromes talked about in the lecture #1. As a road map to understand this lecture #1:
1) Brain Anatomy
2) Brain Maps
Interested people can start discussion on these topics.
Salient Features:
The main theme of the lecture is understanding the functions of the parts of the brain by exploring various brain syndromes. This is facilitated by the fortunate fact that patients having syndromes bear leisons in specific parts of the brain with all other parts intact. By studying the peculiar behavior of the patient with a specific syndrome, one can reason out the function of that specific part of the brain. This is the main approach explained in this lecture.
Towards understanding of the various syndromes to be enumerated below with their broad definition, one must have thorough understanding of the basic fundamental unit of the brain, which is neuron, and the basic anatomy of the brain.
As a note: In the following posts, i will be exploring more about neurons and anatomy of the brain to grasp the following syndromes pointed out in this lecture.
Brain Syndromes:
#1) Prosopognosia or face blindness:
As the non-scientific name suggests, people having this syndrome cannot recognize faces of the people. This does not mean that these patients are blind. Even though they can visualize everything, they cannot recognize faces.
This syndrome leads to more fundamental discussion of vision. what is the process of vision? Praphrasing the same question, what are the complex series of events a brain undergoes for a human being to visualize things in everyday life which is taken for granted as a trivial task.
We will discuss abbout the process of vision in the coming posts.
#2) Capgras Syndrome:
This is quite an bizarre syndrome. Patients having this syndrome can very well recognize faces but CANNOT attach any emotional significance to that visual image. Quoting the same instance in the lecture, the patient upon seeing his mother can recognize that she is her mother but still not sure that she is as he could not feel any love and warmth which are associated with mother.
This syndrome leads to a very interesting discussion of how art is appreciated. How do people appreciate beauty?. For instance, different people have idiosyncratic measures of appreciating beauty of a woman, lets say, some get the emotion of infactuation upon seeing a woman with good superficial features (despite the fact that definition of 'good' is relativistic to the persons nutured opinions) even though she is perfect candidate for a devil.
#3) Phantom Limbs
The vivid feeling of an amputed limb by the patient is termed as phantom limb. He explores why does this happen?. The answer is explained based on brain maps being crosswired. We will discuss about this more after we have learned more about brain maps.
But the main consequential inference from the study of phantom limbs was rebuttal of the traditional notion that once the brain is developed in the feotus, it does not change over time. In other words, there is no possibility of plasticity in brain. He explains most fascinating exploitation of the discovery that brain indeed does undergo plasticity in curing patients to recover of stroke.
#4) Synesthesia
One of the most common and intersting syndrome is synesthesia. It is caused by mixing up of senses. Seeing colors when listening to specific tones like c# is red, F# is yellow. And also visual images of numbers are also associated with certain colors. This is again explained by crosswiring in the brain maps. We will explore this more after learning about brain maps.
The more interesting impact in understanding this syndrome is being able to find as explanation to the evolution of language. This is dealt in detail by Dr. Ramachandran in his other lectures. Let save this after we thoroughly understand this lecture.
#5) Pain Asymbolia
A patient with this syndrome laughs uncontrollable when inflicted by pain even though he can feel the pain. In his discussion, he lead to a most basic question that why do anybody laugh?. What is the definiton of laughter? What are the series events in the brain which lead to laughter?
These are syndromes talked about in the lecture #1. As a road map to understand this lecture #1:
1) Brain Anatomy
2) Brain Maps
Interested people can start discussion on these topics.
Monday, March 3, 2008
About the Blog
This blog is intended to be a platform to share, discuss and gain knowledge on cognitive neuroscience. I developed fascination about this subject after listening to the BBC Reith lectures given by Dr.V. Ramachandran. His thought process in unveiling the mysteries of the brain by studying the brain syndromes is simply amazing. He links neuroscience as a bridge between arts and humanities with science.
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