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.'"
Re:This is simply misguided -- don't we know bette (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
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.
Re:This is simply misguided -- don't we know bette (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe that's the sour-grape syndrome though...
Re:This is simply misguided -- don't we know bette (Score:2, Insightful)
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 I have read a lot on this and never found anything to meaningfully support that differences in the physical brain correspond to personality or intelligence. The differences in brains influence our personality or intelligence just as much as the differences in our livers or hair.
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.
Re:This is simply misguided -- don't we know bette (Score:3, Insightful)
Tone deafness could be the result of brain structure for all we know at this point.
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.
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?
Re:This is simply misguided -- don't we know bette (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is simply misguided -- don't we know bette (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
A tad overrated (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An odd approach... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
The same way we react in shock to those who operated without anesthesia. Or laugh at the Greeks who tried to cure tuberculosis with leeches and a poultice of wine must and sea urchin gonads. (I don't know if they did exactly that, but it's typical of the medicine of the era.) They didn't have a better way, neither do we. We do the best we can with what we know.
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.
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:This is simply misguided -- don't we know bette (Score:3, Insightful)