LEC 3 | MIT 9.00SC INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY, SPRING 2011
our thoughts, our feelings and our brains are supported by our brains. Oliver [UNK] your mind is
what your brain does. sacks' readings from sacks remind you of the importance of the brain. the
readings are provided under the creative commons license under Mit Opencourseware.. neurons
are firing in organized patterns, those are memories, desires, physical actions, thoughts. but the
neurons that are firing away are ones that are involved in memory or songs and perception for
songs. when they fire, it 's as if you heard the song itself. so an opposite response to a similar
phenomenon comes from a Mrs.. Om in her 80s. she hears songs, but also hears a lot of ringing
and hissing. every thought and feeling you'll ever have, or every physical movement, every desire,
every desire. desire. every thing that you 're proud of or ashamed of that crosses your mind will be
supported by this structure. and we 'll focus on hemispheric specialization, the thing in humans
where our left hemisphere and our right hemisphere are organized to accomplish different things
to support different mental functions...
It took a long time for people to decide that the brain actually is the stuff of the mind. at any one
moment, your consciousness might be in one part of the brain, and then it might move to another.
and just like there 's all these people in this room, your brain might be all these things having their
own independent thinking lives. but how much might there be independent modules in your brain
that are doing their own thing. in neuroscience, there 's many levels of analysis of the brain.. In
this course, we mostly have to operate at this level. that 's the place where it 's easy for us to relate
in some ways parts of the mind as we understand it. it 's very hard to get that to molecules. At the
moment. lots of neuroscience is working to connect these things at different. different levels. we
understand incredibly more than we did 10 years ago, 20 years ago or 30 years ago,. we 're
incredibly far from understanding how your brain accomplishes the amazing things it
accomplishes. an average neuron may have up to 15,000 connections, 1,000 synapses and up to
1,00 neurons.. neurons have all kinds of different shapes in different parts of the brain..
An unbelievable amount of stuff is going on releasing them, cleaning them away so they do n't
hang around too long, building new ones to get ready to go. it 's just an unbelievable story per
neuron, never mind the whole of them. we take a step back to the brain as a whole.. Here is a basal
ganglia that we know is involved in movement. we know it's involved in motor control, but in
many other things as well. the cerebral cortex is comprised of four lobes frontal, parietal,,
occipital, and temporal.. These lobes are comprised of gyri, the part of the brain that sticks out.
and then there 's this sort of indentation where it dives deep into a sulcus. comes back up, it 's the
next gyrus, dives deep. into the next sulcus, a fissure that separates the temporal and frontal
cortices. and nobody really. Nobody really knows why do we have this thing like that. when you
touch or when you move your body, these are motor cortical neurons. when the neurons look
different, they have a different job to do. and there 's lots of debates about the best way to do this,
or different interpretations. but something like this holds true in a striking way. the cellular
organization of the brain reflects in some way what that brain is accomplishing. and then we have
our thoughts, our feelings and our brains are supported by our brains. Oliver [UNK] your mind is
what your brain does. sacks' readings from sacks remind you of the importance of the brain. the
readings are provided under the creative commons license under Mit Opencourseware.. neurons
are firing in organized patterns, those are memories, desires, physical actions, thoughts. but the
neurons that are firing away are ones that are involved in memory or songs and perception for
songs. when they fire, it 's as if you heard the song itself. so an opposite response to a similar
phenomenon comes from a Mrs.. Om in her 80s. she hears songs, but also hears a lot of ringing
and hissing. every thought and feeling you'll ever have, or every physical movement, every desire,
every desire. desire. every thing that you 're proud of or ashamed of that crosses your mind will be
supported by this structure. and we 'll focus on hemispheric specialization, the thing in humans
where our left hemisphere and our right hemisphere are organized to accomplish different things
to support different mental functions...
It took a long time for people to decide that the brain actually is the stuff of the mind. at any one
moment, your consciousness might be in one part of the brain, and then it might move to another.
and just like there 's all these people in this room, your brain might be all these things having their
own independent thinking lives. but how much might there be independent modules in your brain
that are doing their own thing. in neuroscience, there 's many levels of analysis of the brain.. In
this course, we mostly have to operate at this level. that 's the place where it 's easy for us to relate
in some ways parts of the mind as we understand it. it 's very hard to get that to molecules. At the
moment. lots of neuroscience is working to connect these things at different. different levels. we
understand incredibly more than we did 10 years ago, 20 years ago or 30 years ago,. we 're
incredibly far from understanding how your brain accomplishes the amazing things it
accomplishes. an average neuron may have up to 15,000 connections, 1,000 synapses and up to
1,00 neurons.. neurons have all kinds of different shapes in different parts of the brain..
An unbelievable amount of stuff is going on releasing them, cleaning them away so they do n't
hang around too long, building new ones to get ready to go. it 's just an unbelievable story per
neuron, never mind the whole of them. we take a step back to the brain as a whole.. Here is a basal
ganglia that we know is involved in movement. we know it's involved in motor control, but in
many other things as well. the cerebral cortex is comprised of four lobes frontal, parietal,,
occipital, and temporal.. These lobes are comprised of gyri, the part of the brain that sticks out.
and then there 's this sort of indentation where it dives deep into a sulcus. comes back up, it 's the
next gyrus, dives deep. into the next sulcus, a fissure that separates the temporal and frontal
cortices. and nobody really. Nobody really knows why do we have this thing like that. when you
touch or when you move your body, these are motor cortical neurons. when the neurons look
different, they have a different job to do. and there 's lots of debates about the best way to do this,
or different interpretations. but something like this holds true in a striking way. the cellular
organization of the brain reflects in some way what that brain is accomplishing. and then we have
