TOK Brain Powerpoint 2013
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Transcript of TOK Brain Powerpoint 2013
THE BRAIN
All your…
• 3 pounds of squidgy, whitish, buttery gloop…. cytoplasm• 1500ml• 3 times bigger than any ape or
Australopithecus
• 30 billion neurons (fire in patterns)
Each with about 5000 dendrites; synaptic connections in 3d space
WE DO NOT HAVE A CONVINCING OVERARCHING THEORY FOR HOW IT WORKS YET
Smart ape
Embodied
Mind on the hoof: 4Fs
Embedded
…in a specific culture
Umwelt: sensory world
Ultraviolet
Olfactory
Tactile
Infra red
Auditory – Echolocation
•What is it like to be a bat?
subsonic sound
Color Vision
Psychedelic Umwelt of hyperspectral color and polarized light
Electrical fields
Extended phenotype
Language and social learning
7. “My second favorite organ”
• 30 billion neurons (fire in patterns)
Each with about 5000 dendrites synaptic connections in 3d space
WE DO NOT HAVE A CONVINCING OVERARCHING THEORY FOR HOW IT WORKS YET
Synapse
Interesting bits
Sensory
Dinner napkin cerebral cortex
Cerebral cortex
?
?
Neuroscience—a golden age
• Like ocean unchartered territory
Baby brainTwice the number of neurons!
Very few connections
Ship coming out of the fog
• Newborn
• 4 weeks
• 8 weeks
• 3 months
• 6 months
10. Neural Darwinism
Selection
1. More connections produced than needed
2. Competing for limited nutients and O2
3. Neurons that fire together wire together
4. Use or lose… brain constructs itself by the logic of evolution and embryology; not analogous to a manufactured computer
• 600 phonemes at birth
• 45 per language
Active Perception
• Fuzzy input-degeneracy
Mind on the hoof: 4Fs
INFERENCE MACHINE
• What if?
• Living in the subjunctive tense?
• Scientific method: wet-wired?
• Curiosity/Creativity?
• Making it up as we go along (on the fly)?
• Who do we think we are?
Adolescent brain
TAKE HOMES
• 1. Embodied and embedded
• 2. Construct self (brain) based on experienceNeural Darwinism
• 3. Neuroscience in infancy (excited about new discoveries)
• 4. The brain is not a computer WHY?
• 5. Spotting patterns/makes predictions/fuzzy metaphor and language precedes logic
ONLY ONCE IN THE WORLD…
• We are only once in the world, thrown into a situation that we have not chosen. Randomly tossed into a specific period and place. We do choose our particular geographic, historic, linguistic, cultural or socio-economic backdrop. We are left in the lurch, so to speak, only to do our utmost, with the hand dealt, during a finite span between the contingency of birth, and the certainty of death.
It will be short. The Interim is mine; And a man’s life no more than to say ‘one.’
Shakespeare: Hamlet. (V.2. 73-75)