The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience

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The brain is a complex organ that controls all bodily processes, including thought, sensory perception, and physical action. Despite weighing only 3 pounds, the human brain contains as many as 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections. It’s weird how the most interesting thing about the book is ancient research yet that’s just 1 single chapter! The remaining 14 chapters is largely research max 300 years old. I would have really enjoyed a book about ancient history and this feels like it should have been it. The writing style is just dry and humourless enough to not really engage you unless you really like the topic. It’s also waaaaay too many name drops. even though we may not currently understand a particular phenomenon, that does not mean we will never be able to understand it. To argue that there are things we can never understand is to undermine the whole point of science, which is to explain what is currently unexplainable." Animals are not robots piloted by brains, we are all, whether maggots or humans, individuals with agency and a developmental and evolutionary history". In the “Future” section Cobb describes where brain science might be going, and which new metaphors and technologies may help. This was the most exciting part of the book. But to say too much would spoil the journey for you, dear reader. And this review is long enough already.

Brain a machine. This philosophy is now boring. It’s not the cool creative philosophy of the past. Rather people are trying to actually explain how the brain works. So it’s largely statements like: the brain is like a computer, the brain calculates things, the brain reacts but can also be made to not react. Predictions about future computer and human interaction. Kinda pointless and shallow. It’s the typical floofy guesswork that doesn’t really explain much. The idea of stimulating the brain to evoke conscious experiences has a long history in neuroscience [ 1– 4]. Nowadays, brain–machine interfaces [ 5] encode and decode neuronal activity [ 6– 8] and are routinely used to control neuroprosthetics [ 9]. Electrical stimulation of sensory brain areas is becoming sufficiently precise to deliver specific content, bypassing sensory organs [ 10] or diseased brain tissue [ 11]. Furthermore, it is now possible to evoke a memory by selectively reactivating ensembles of neurons (i.e., the engram) that were naturally active in the animal’s brain in a previous event [ 12, 13] (for review, see [ 14]). Although brain activity can take many forms, it is almost always associated with the neuronal firing of action potentials. Moreover, the effective use of action potentials in brain–machine interfaces with neuroprosthetics and rehabilitation of neural function [ 5] suggests that action potentials are the fundamental unit of information in the brain. Macdonald K, Germine L, Anderson A, Christodoulou J, Mcgrath LM. Dispelling the Myth: Training in Education or Neuroscience Decreases but Does Not Eliminate Beliefs in Neuromyths. Front Psychol. 2017;8:1314. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01314A great overview of the field of neuroscience, focused on its historic development and our present state of understanding. Goldie J. The implications of brain lateralisation for modern general practice. Br J Gen Pract. 2016;66(642):44-5. doi: 10.3399/bjgp16X683341 An "elegant", "engrossing" (Carol Tavris, Wall Street Journal) examination of what we think we know about the brain and why -- despite technological advances -- the workings of our most essential organ remain a mystery. Di Liegro CM, Schiera G, Proia P, Di Liegro I. Physical activity and brain health. Genes (Basel). 2019;10(9):720. doi:10.3390/genes10090720

How computer AI works. Very short intro. There are some points about how AI researchers see the brain, but brains are totally different from programs. Also, we don't know how AI works so the research is not used to understand the brain as even simple AI is too complicated to understand. Sha, Z., et al. (2021). Handedness and its genetic influences are associated with structural asymmetries of the cerebral cortex in 31,864 individuals. We tend to assume that our models of the brain are correct. For example, we “instinctively” think of the brain as separate from the body, the seat of consciousness, as a computer, and as a collection of neurons; we “instinctively” think that what the brain does is think (Cobb’s argument), or remember, or create consciousness. Cobb documents that each of these ways of understanding the brain are relatively modern and incomplete—not instinctive or obvious at all. https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/patient-caregiver-education/brain-basics-know-your-brain

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In the working hypothesis, we only considered whether action potentials cause consciousness. Performing our experiments for other neuronal processes might be more difficult than for action potentials and, in some cases, even impossible. However, conceptually, it is straightforward to include them in the hypothesis and even include combinations of multiple processes; for example, membrane potential fluctuations, calcium ion concentrations [ 53, 54], the release of neurotransmitters from the presynaptic terminals, or activity in glial cells [ 55, 56]. To consider multiple biological processes, we first need to record these processes and then test the hypothesis against Steps 1 to 3 by asking in each step whether the participant’s conscious perception changed when the respective cellular processes remained exactly the same. About modern drugs and how we don't know how they work. Kinda boring to be fair even though it's full of info.