The Future of the Most Important Human Brain 252
mattnyc99 writes "About a year ago, we watched live as neuroanatomist Jacopo Annese sliced the brain of Memento-style patient Henry Molaison (aka H.M.) into 2,401 pieces. Since even before then, writer Luke Dittrich — whose grandfather happened to be the surgeon to accidentally slice open the H.M. skull in the first place — has been tracking Annese and a new revolution in brain science. From the article in Esquire: 'If Korbinian Brodmann created the mind's Rand McNally, Jacopo Annese is creating its Google Maps. ... With his Brain Observatory, Annese is setting out to create not the world's largest but the world's most useful collection of brains. ... For the first time, we'll be able to meaningfully and easily compare large numbers of brains, perhaps finally understanding why one brain might be less empathetic or better at calculus or likelier to develop Alzheimer's than another. The Brain Observatory promises to revolutionize our understanding of how these three-pound hunks of tissue inside our skulls do what they do, which means, of course, that it promises to revolutionize our understanding of ourselves.'"
An odd approach... (Score:4, Interesting)
While I have no wish to demean their efforts, this approach still seems somewhat brutal to me. I'm no neurologist, but isn't this still a rather macro-level view of things, with the cutting process still causing damage to the fine structures they want to study?
It seems likely to me that future scientists will look back at this in not too long with stifled laugher and perhaps a little shock at the approach.
Re:An odd approach... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are lots of ways to image and study the brain. This is just one more. Sure, in a hypothetical future they might be able to scan it down to the finest detail, but for now we do what we can.
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The major problem is that at the point of death (or at least, brain-death) is that the dendrites of the neurons detach from the axons of the surrounding neurons at about a rate that is the square of the of the difference over time of the inverse of temperature loss...meaning, by the time you slice-and-dice, the important bit (that is, the bits, rather...the connections and pathways that make you...well, you...are gone).
Re:An odd approach... (Score:5, Insightful)
The brain is extremely complex, and nondestructive imaging methods are either expensive, low-resolution, or both. Good old slice-n-stain, with a dash of modern robotics, is cheap and high resolution.
Since we know so little about how brains actually work, it isn't a bad idea to just build a giant dataset, using an economic and high-resolution technique, and hope that that dataset allows future researchers to pinpoint more closely what they should actually be looking for.
Given that the supply of brains donated to science, while not huge, can be reasonably expected to continue into the indefinite future, starting with destructive; but quick, reverse engineering steps, and then gradually progressing down to finer, more focused ones, seems pretty sensible.
A lot of the brains thus sliced will, it is true, be destroyed as far as the researchers of the future are concerned; but slicing them may be the only way to get the researchers of the future to a position of sufficient knowledge.
Ourselves? (Score:2, Funny)
You might think you are nothing more than your brain, but I am really my soul.* The brain is just a channel to communicate the will to the body.
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* "Soul" in this context means "testicles."
Please destroy my childhood more.. (Score:3, Funny)
I am really my soul.*
...
* "Soul" in this context means "testicles."
I really, really hope you appreciate how incredibly gay you just made Mortal Kombat. [youtube.com]
Still... (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't escape a feeling that what they are doing is akin to slicing apples and then taking high grain black and white photos of those slices - in order to find out how they taste.
Re:An odd approach... (Score:5, Funny)
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My brain doesn't seem to be working well (I had a few beers). I thought I'd read everything he wrote, what's that from?
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Re:An odd approach... (Score:4, Funny)
As opposed to working cat before? What's that?
(/me looks around...yup, the beast sleeps; on the coffer this time)
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Do you have a better way? Seriously, it's not like they haven't spent the better part of a century working out the sectioning techniques and steadily improving them.
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The same way we react in shock to those who operated without anesthesia.
Are we so sure anyone ever did this on a regular basis?
I ask because we have made alcohol for a long time, and known of plants that would have anesthetic applications possibly even longer.
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Much later: A physician was asked what course not in Med School contributed most to his career.
Carpentry.
Re:An odd approach... (Score:4, Informative)
This is not so likely to be historically correct as one might suppose. Fact is, what they fired out of cannons back then wasn't loose powder and shot, but a single bag containing powder and a cannonball. In other words, if you don't have any cannonballs (not shells), then you've got no powder to shoot nails and chains.
Ether was used more than you might suppose in the Civil War. At least by the Union, who could afford to make the stuff and had the wherewithal to deliver it in quantity to their armies.
Anyone who believed in 1861 that the Revolutionary War was a "gentlemen's conflict" was so deluded about history that he can be excused for thinking that the Civil War was going to be one. Alas, history doesn't agree about the nature of the Revolutionary War.
Note, for reference, that the people who tended to think in terms of "gentelmen's war" were mostly Southern aristocrats. Most of the soldiers on both sides weren't able to kid themselves that standing on a battlefield with 30,000+ other people trying to kill you was going to be a friendly sort of affair.
Oddly enough, I had a great-great-grandfather in just such a situation. Battle of Franklin, in fact.
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Yes.
Re:An odd approach... (Score:5, Informative)
but isn't this still a rather macro-level view of things, with the cutting process still causing damage to the fine structures they want to study?
No, the cryostat is designed to preserve things down to the subcellular level. Had they just cut it up with a scalpel, yeah, that would not preserve much. Fixing it with, say, paraformaldehyde, then freezing it and sectioning it, the sections do okay if you're skilled at it. You can see down to the neuron level.
It seems likely to me that future scientists will look back at this in not too long with stifled laugher and perhaps a little shock at the approach.
I personally am always astounded at what past scientists were able to accomplish with the tools at hand. Ramon Y Cajal, the "father of neuroscience" had primitive microscopes and a method of staining cells that sounds exhausting, but described the brain in astonishing detail. I personally doubt I could have accomplished what he did with the tools we have now. Unless future scientists are idiots, they'll likely realize that these are the best tools we have now.
It is being done for the heart (Score:3, Interesting)
The same applies to the dissection of other organs as well. For instance, any dissection of the heart is inherently biased towards the cutting planes defined by the dissector ( source [ctsnetjournals.org]). The true arrangement of muscle fibers in the left ventricle of the heart (more precisely the existence of sheet structure) is still a subject of hot debate because of this. Obviously, one might think that by now, we should be able to just pick an organ and throw it into the best relevant imaging scanner (CT, MRI, PET, etc.).
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Then again, physical features are still important for gross scale understanding of the brain's structures, especially when cross-referenced among thousands of samples. If you want to know how Alzheimers, or Parkin
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Probably. "Look at these barbarians, who didn't use tools and methods which weren't invented until later!" It's not unlike the recent story deriding Newton for being an alchemist, despite that being entirely reasonable at his time - it makes the rest of us who couldn't invent Calculus or the Laws of Motion feel better.
It's one of the more pathetic aspects of hu
Clearly this is a front organization (Score:3, Funny)
Clearly this a front organization--for zombies!
Things that matter (Score:2)
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For once, Slashdot has been too fast publishing an article.
Sssssh! The /. editors don't want anyone to know they had a premature climax.
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I don't get why suddenly this Halloween has become the Zombie Festival.
Maybe people didn't get enough of it last Easter and couldn't wait until next Easter.
BTW, has anyone seen anyone selling a Sexy Zombie costume? It's, uh, not for me...
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You might try searching for Forsaken [gamespy.com] costumes. That's the best costume I could find on a quick search.
Not sure how useful this is (Score:2, Informative)
Here at the UW we harvest thousands of brains for various medical studies, and generally freeze half of the brain and slice up the other half and stain that half with various dyes, while taking electrical and other measurements within a few hours of death.
While an approach like this described in the article might be useful for things like Pick's Disease, it would pretty much prove useless for Alzheimer's Disease, since that is an age-appropriate measurement of tangles and neurolytic fibers.
Things like child
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Is there a way to sign up for this?
Does it impact organ donor status or anything else?
It is my hope to donate whatever parts are usable for reuse and have the rest used for science. No point in wasting perfectly good meat.
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What a bummer, as much as I love progress reuse comes before recycle :)
Was it Hans Delbruck's? (Score:2)
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: [to Igor] Now that brain that you gave me. Was it Hans Delbruck's?
Igor: [pause, then] No.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Ah! Very good. Would you mind telling me whose brain I DID put in?
Igor: Then you won't be angry?
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: I will NOT be angry.
Igor: Abby Someone.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: [pause, then] Abby Someone. Abby who?
Igor: Abby Normal.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: [pause, then] Abby Normal?
Igor: I'm almost sure that was the name.
A tad overrated (Score:3, Insightful)
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Surely this can be tested on rats.
Make them learn stuff, damage their brains and try teaching them new stuff. Seems pretty open and shut.
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Make them learn stuff, damage their brains and try teaching them new stuff.
My friends and I survived that very experiment back in my college days. We used the "weekly drink special" methodology.
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Other than HM, the other patient coming to my mind is Clive Wearing - here is a very insightful article by The New Yorker back in 2007 - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/09/24/070924fa_fact_sacks?currentPage=all [newyorker.com]
Though I am not sure how much he contributed, but his case is every bit as (or more?) interesting as HM.
Oblig. "Youing Frankenstein" quote (Score:2, Funny)
Igor: Of course.
Dr. Frankenstein: Sit down, won't you?
Igor: Thank you. [sits on the floor]
Dr. Frankenstein: No no, up here.
Igor: Thank you. [sits on a chair]
Dr. Frankenstein: Now... that brain that you gave me... was it Hans Delbruck's?
Igor: [Crosses arms] No.
Dr. Frankenstein: [Holds up hand] Ah. Good. Uh... would you mind telling me... whose brain... I did put in?
Igor: And you won't be angry?
The most important thing is... (Score:2, Funny)
"accidentally slice open the H.M. skull"? (Score:3, Informative)
"whose grandfather happened to be the surgeon to accidentally slice open the H.M. skull in the first place"
The surgery was no accident - it was a planned procedure that the doctors (correctly) thought would stop the epileptic seizures that H.M. was experiencing.
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No, someone's intelligence or outlook on the world is a combination of upbringing, willpower and education. Anyone could be as intelligent and knowledgeable as they wanted to be, if they wanted to be.
How young are you?
This is one of the most naive things I have ever heard. Some folks are never going to be rocket surgeons.That might not be ok with the current everyone is a genius and everyone gets a trophy crowd but it is the truth.
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Maybe that's the sour-grape syndrome though...
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I fail to see how this applies to what I said. Please feel free to elaborate.
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I made no claim that they would.
My only claim was that some people lack the capacity to do so and that may be and most likely is a result of differences in the brain.
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Let me try that again: Some people don't really give a shit about how much money, power, knowledge or fame they get. If someone finds physics interesting, that doesn't mean they're going to become a rocket scientist, or have any desire to do so.
The GGP was stating that there are distinct physiological differences between people, which result in profound differences in ability. You seem to be supporting the GP's assertion that a person's intellectual ability is purely a product of their environment, and also claiming that people who don't achieve much fail to do so because of lack of motivation, not because of lack of intelligence.
If you've ever tried to teach a complex skill (programming, mathematics, music) to a group of people, you'll know tha
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I know folks who never could do such a thing, no matter how bad they wanted it. I imagine you do as well.
These folks vary from borderline disabled to just a little slow. These traits are clearly nature not nurture as they have perfectly functional siblings.
Re:This is simply misguided -- don't we know bette (Score:4, Insightful)
I was going to mod you troll, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you really do believe that all brains are created equal- but in that case, and by your own argument, you must not be very motivated or lack the discipline to learn the truth of the matter. I wonder what could account for that?
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He's not a troll, just ignorant. Hopefully this thread educated him.
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1. I think you mean straw man. I presume a sand man argument is one that puts your opponents to sleep?
2. While education certainly plays a part, and learning to think is a part of that education, I can't see how you can support the statement "all working non defective brains start off equal".
3. I'm curious as to your definition of 'defective'. You seem to think that there's some factory spec. for brains, and that most of them conform to this spec whereas some don't properly implement it.
4. W
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Tell that to my oldest daughter, who had her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck when bein born and suffered brain damage as a result.
Retardation is incurable, but ignorance is not.
Re:This is simply misguided -- don't we know bette (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone with that aspiration can teach themselves what they need to, go to school or get training, and do it. Especially for that type of discipline(physics/math) where prerequisite knowledge is more important than original thinking.
You're not serious, are you?
You mean I can train myself to have perfect pitch, like some musicians? Or to have perfect color sense, like artists? Or a deep understanding of multiple dimensions?
That's like saying that we can all play basketball like Wilt Chamberlain, or ride a bike like Lance Armstrong.
Each brain is drastically different, each is capable of different things. No amount of training will make my daughter an engineer like her brother in spite of her nearly perfect math skills. No amount of training will give my son the empathy to deal with animals like his sister has.
Brains are as different as our bodies, and no amount of training will let me run a marathon; my body won't allow it. For some, no amount of training will let them keep up with me on a bicycle.
No amount of training will let most people keep up with me in my field of intellectual expertise; I have great vision in that one area, and I'm a total doofus in others.
Yeah, I can learn to flip burgers. But that won't let me compete with an accomplished chef, who has talent and vision.
You should try teaching... anything. (Score:2)
At about... oh... 100 random students (as in - didn't really pick to be there by themselves, not their favorite subject but they have to this subject anyway) you will start to notice those that simply... don't function properly.
Not retarded or stupid even, their minds simply can't bend around certain concepts or tasks.
The best they can do is just memorize - or cheat.
Think bog standard PC's - where one has an integrated graphic card and another comes with a pluginable one with similar performances. Similar o
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- signed, the guy who didn't understand why the other kids in primary school DIDN'T get 100%
Re:This is simply misguided -- don't we know bette (Score:5, Insightful)
This is so unbelievably unintelligent that if it weren't so long I might think it was a joke.
I often resort to extreme examples when explaining the ability for variations to people who deny variations exist. So with that in mind, an extreme example of a different kind of brain would be the autistic mind. Clearly it is different. It has little to nothing to do with the way the person was raised or educated over time. It is how their brain was created. If a brain can be created to that extreme of difference why not changed in more subtle ways that allow enhanced mathematical capabilities or greater empathy.
Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen or exist.
The whole point of science and these studies is to figure these things out. To learn about the things we can't see but effect our daily lives.
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Affect
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You're argument has so much more authority when you use insults...
Anyway
I am not denying variations in brain exist. I am saying teh variations in brains are about as meaningful as variations in livers, and are not the causes for different types and levels of intelligence in people.
Your use of an autistic mind as an analogy is interesting, but flawed. An autistic mind is a defective brain. Using my PC analogy before, an autistic mind is the equivalent of only being able to boot in single user mode.
Sorry, but
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So now you claim differences in brains can make them defective?
Where exactly are you drawing this line you so suddenly found?
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I think you are the one who does not get it. Your two statements are contradictory.
If variations are negligible, and an error is a variation.....
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Do you believe that nothing causes physical changes in the brain?
No matter the cause nature or nuture, physical changes on some level must occur. How else does memory work?
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Patient H.M.'s brain was NOT physically the same as all other brains. There were known changes made to it, and effects from that change that helped us do extensive mapping of brain activity which would have been difficult to do otherwise. That's the whole point of why patient H.M. was so important.
You don't appear to get anything.
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Patient H.M. was never able to regain the ability to form new long term memories, so your argument of how well-known "rewiring" of the brain is, is directly counter to what H.M. showed us.
In short, your arguments are nonsensical and uninformed. You should leave this to those who work in neurosciences.
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Science refutes Calvinism and the attendant ideology of success by person effort and willpower.
Not every person who is unsuccessful is willfully indolent - in fact most are doing the best with what they have.
Not everyone who is poor deserves to suffer and die - many are, apart from their genetics, no different than you or I
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My brain is not normal. Ask anybody who knows me. However, it works better than yours.
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It's odd for you to have a pro-science polemic and be using quasi-religious terminology like "how their brain was created". It's currently a very open question when exactly brains are "created", with most scientists believing it isn't at any one time. Physical brain structure changes significantly over someone's life, especially in the earlier years; it doesn't spring from the womb fully preprogrammed. Experimental interventions on other mammals (can't do that research on humans) show that environmental and
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Why can we not do this research on humans at least in a observational manner?
By that I mean using MRIs and other non-invasive techniques compare brain structure to lifestyle, education and important events in a group of peoples lives.
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Funny how that terminology, and seemingly pro-science polemic with one extremely simplistic example thrown around (how one can even think it's sensible to use "the PC" for this?), appears to be mostly just a slightly stronger than usual manifestation of certain universal "errors" in...physical structure of the brain / the workings its neural network. Things like just-world phenomenon, correspondence bias or illusory superiority (which indeed partly disappear in some disorders...or indeed even if somebody "s
Re:This is simply misguided -- don't we know bette (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry to disagree with you, but clearly the physical properties of the brain matter.
Which physical properties? Well, we need to find out.
Think about it for a while. All my life I would have given a leg and an arm to learn to play any musical instrument (went to schools for years) and could never get beyond the really easy stuff; a seven year-old child could out-play me every time. But I have a gift for analisys and abstraction, thus I'm good at writing software.
You say upbringing, education and will-power. Well I had all three: mom was a music director who wrote music and poetry, I went to very good music schools and I yearned to be able to play music; I simply don't have the right "hardware".
Try running Deep Blue's software in your bog standard PC, see how far it gets.
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But I have a gift for analisys and abstraction, thus I'm good at writing software.
You should put those programming skills to use creating a spell checker :)
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I would never take the spelling nazis' fun away! I'm a civilized being -.__.-
Now I'll know if you're English or American!
Analysis is a word I always have trouble with, in my native language is "analisis" and I always get confused as to where the "y" goes.
Re:This is simply misguided -- don't we know bette (Score:5, Funny)
The Funny English Language
No wonder the English language is so very difficult to learn.
I sometimes wonder how we manage to communicate at all!
We'll begin with a box and the plural is boxes.
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
The one fowl is a goose but two are called geese
, Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may found a lone mouse or a whole set of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of a foot and you show me your feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth, Why should not the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural wouldn't be hose.
And the plural of cat is cats and not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say Mother, we never say Methren,
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine she, shis and shim, So English, I fancy you will all agree,
Is the funniest language you ever did see.
Why can’t people from all over the world speak English?
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All my life I would have given a leg and an arm to learn to play any musical instrument
MONKEY PAW!!!
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Tone deafness could be the result of brain structure for all we know at this point.
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So a variation that is a defect in a working brain does not indicate other traits could be the result of similar variations.
That is some might fine hair splitting you are doing there.
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Wait, a simpler analogy.
If you buy a new car and there is a problem with cruise control, does that mean it is correct to infer that there may be cars of the same model that have significantly better cruise control?
That is the leap you are making, and it is not supported, either logically or with our observations.
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If I know that the problem is a defect with this model. Like say I sliced the cruise control wire. Like in this case.
Do you think you could run faster than Usain Bolt if you just tried?
Everything about you is physical you could no more want to be smarter and become smarter than you could want to be taller and become so.
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Even software is physical, it gets recorded on the disks, thus changing them.
If I spent 10 years maintain a correct diet and exercise regime, then yes, I could quite likely run faster than Usain Bolt.
Not going to happen, people try that and fail all the time. They just are not built for it.
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Also, just parenthetically, PCs compartmentalize their differences rather aggressively, for cost reasons; but it is actually relatively simple to observe the hardware differences between PCs running different OSes: just look at the arrangement of magnetic domains on the HDD platter surfaces. Hardly easier than just booting the sucker; but 100% physical and hardware based.
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No, it is something that is directly observable as a structural change. You could take the platter off and see it with an electron microscope. It would be about as much a structural change as you will see on a turned off PC.
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Of course intelligence or a unique way of thinking is due to a physical brain property. What other possibility is there? Fairy dust? A "soul"? Now I agree it may be that the physical properties which remain after death and dissection aren't enough to reconstruct the physical properties important to intelligence or unique thought, there are certainly enough properties there to make the study worthwhile.
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And as a neuroscientist let me tell you, brains ARE different.
Re:This is simply misguided -- don't we know bette (Score:4, Informative)
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Note the GP said gross pathology not itty bitty little difference.
We continue down this road, because there must be something changing. How else are memories recorded?
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It is very unlikely that a boost in intelligence or a unique way of thinking is due to a physical brain property.
Huh? If not physical then what? Spiritual? Thought is just chemistry, chemistry is just physics.
The brain is a physical object. Mine is, right now, affected by beer. Simple chemistry. Well, maybe not so simple but still chemistry.
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A brain is a brain, huh? Tell that to the kid kid with trisomy 21, fragile X, or numerous other genetic disease that cause brain malformations.
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But there IS a physical difference between two formerly identical PCs that have different OS's installed on them. You can't see it on the outside but its not magic and pixie dust. The magnetic properties of the IDE drive are changed in distinct and decodeable ways that dictate how the OS works and operates the rest of the hardware of the PC.
Studying the brain in this way is to try and figure out what the equivalent is to the magnetic storage method of the hard drive and then to somehow decode that storage m
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Please list your research. It seems to contradict the majority of the literature out there and would be interesting to read.
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http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7084/full/440588b.html [nature.com]
http://www.sheknows.com/health-and-wellness/articles/800980/ability-to-handle-stress-depression-linked-to-variations-in-brain-structure-and-function [sheknows.com]
Everything is physical, everything. No magic, No soul, deal with it. Even nurture causes directly observable changes in the brain.
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Increased size of the inferior parietal lobe, statistically significant increase in the level of glial cells, enlarged Sylvian fissure, vacant parietal operculum. That's what we discovered in Einstein's brain. Unfortunately, Einstein is only one statistical point. Without more genius brains, it's difficult to say what exactly caused his genius. Therefore, let's study -all- the brains of dead people. As many as we can get. The one thing we can say from that is that there are clearly physical difference
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So where do you think they got that drive/willpower if not from some physical difference or chemical one?
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So is that a physical/structural change or chemical one?
Humans do not operate on fairy dust and unicorn farts.
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We could also predict they would be individualistic, egocentric and disrespectful of authority. All you had to do was look at me...
Wow, it sure is Lamarckian genetics in this thread.