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)