How much do we really know about the human brain?

_{Denyse O'Leary

October 15, 2013

Neuroscience, News}

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“We have a hundred billion neurons in each human brain,” said Nicholas Spitzer, a neurobiologist and co-director of the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind at the University of California-San Diego (which is partnering with The Atlantic on this event). “Right now, the best we can do is to record the electrical activity of maybe a few hundred of those neurons. …

Wow. Schmeazle, would you mind dealing with the rest of those neurons on your lunch hour?

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

Comments

Thanks Querius! Fascinating article that will ruffle a few feathers.bornagain77_{October 21, 2013
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Here's a fascinating development in cognitive neuroscience research: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304410204579139423079198270 According to Stephen Kosslyn, cognitive modality is based on both brain structure and interaction. Apparently, a lot of the popular narrative regarding the separate functionality of the left and right brain and the corpus callosum is misleading at best.Querius_{October 20, 2013
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Let me add that there is not a single shred of biological evidence that the brain uses Bayesian statistics to handle uncertainty.Mapou_{October 15, 2013
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Mainstream thinking (i.e., the consensus) in computational neuroscience is that the brain uses Bayesian statistics to handle the uncertainty of the sensory space. Current speech recognition and language understanding programs use a form of Bayesian prediction model called the Hidden Markov Model. The consensus is about to proven wrong once again.Mapou_{October 15, 2013
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Right on. All they do, and not much, is record flashes of light. The bible says we are souls and live forever. Its impossible for thoughtful Christians to conclude our thinking is in ANY way related to our brain or body. It can only be a middleman from our soul to the material world/body. Evolution has tried to say human intelligence is just evolved fishbrains and a machine. So they seek in our brain for our thoughts. They seek in vain. In fact Christian belief demands a conclusion that all problems with human thinking must be unrelated to our soul and so must be related to the material world. Therefore all problems must simply be a spectrum of memory problems. Our memory breaks down as its not a part of our soul but of our body. Healing could go forward with understanding, as I see it, that triggering issues with the memory is the source for all human defects in thinking.Robert Byers_{October 15, 2013
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