The enhancement and pruning of neural networks occurs most apparently as the baby begins to develop language. Spoken languages can sound very different from each other. In all, human languages produce about 200 different spoken sounds, called phonemes. Spoken English contains just over one-sixth of those possible sounds.
A Japanese-language keyboard suggests some of the potential complexity of learning language.
Brain scans of newborns reveal that in the first few months of life, their brain recognizes the subtle differences in phonemes other than those spoken at home. Japanese infants easily recognize the difference between the sounds made by the letters R and L. However, as the Japanese language has no sound like the letter L, adults raised speaking Japanese lose their ability to distinguish it from the letter R. Similarly, English speakers learning Spanish as adults struggle to separate the subtle sounds of the letters Band P in spoken Spanish.
But babies are able to tell such differences. That’s why it’s far easier to learn a variety of languages as a child. However, as infant brains focus on processing the auditory signals of their native languages, starting at about age 11 months they lose their ability to differentiate some nonnative phonemes. Children and adults who learn new languages after having undergone “phoneme contraction” speak with an accent.
By the time a baby is three or four months of age, its behavior provides clues to its having reached new milestones in brain development. At that age, individual infants differ widely in their reaction to events and in their patterns of brain activity as measured in EEG scans.
Rs & Ls
JAPANESE WHO BEGIN studying the English language as adults struggle with the sound of the letters Rand L. It’s not the tongue that’s to blame-it’s the brain. Newborns can distinguish all phonemes, or language sounds. Between six months and one year of age, however, children lose the ability to process previously unheard language sounds. Their loss is called phoneme contraction. Since the Japanese language slurs Rand L phonemes, adults who are exposed to the separate sounds in English for the first time cannot hear, or articulate, the difference. It’s the same for English speakers learning Japanese. They can learn the words, but it’s too late for the neuronal circuits to get the sounds exactly right.
A pattern of responses known as behavioral inhibition, which includes shyness and fear when exposed to new people and experiences, occurs in one in five healthy four month olds. Their brains show higher levels of electrical activity in the right frontal lobes. Likewise, older babies who cry upon being separated from their mother have more activity in the prefrontal cortex of their right hemisphere than do children who remain calm when mom disappears from sight.
ALBERT & THE RAT
IN A 1913 manifesto, John B. Watson introduced the term behaviorism, which, he wrote, eliminated the “dividing line between man and brute” in asserting that emotions are determined not by DNA but by external stimuli. Watson built on Ivan Pavlov’s foundation of conditioned stimulus response. Foreshadowing the 1932 publication of Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, Watson theorized that “man and brute” alike can be made to order. He guaranteed, for instance, to rear any of 12 random infants to take on the occupation of his choosing. Yet Watson is remembered most, perhaps, for instilling in an infant boyan irrational fear of all things white and furry.
An 11-month-old called Little Albert plays his part in a famous behaviorist experiment.
In 1919, Watson began to work with 11-month-old Little Albert, conditioning him to fear a white rat. To begin with, Albert liked his pet, trying to touch and even hold it. Watson believed this reflected a curiosity innate in all children. Later, a new stimulus was introduced: When Albert reached for the rat, Watson banged a metal bar with a carpenter’s hammer. Albert fell face-forward on the mattress, whimpering. The rat was shown repeatedly, with gong and without, until Little Albert’s congenital fear of loud noises was transferred to the rat. This phobia, Watson later learned, applied also to white rabbits, dogs, a fur coat, and even a Santa Claus mask. Presumably, Watson wrote, Albert could eventually become unconditioned, but the boy was adopted before further experiments could be performed.
Migrating neurons are helped along by glial cells. They support and nourish the neurons on their journeys. Some help regulate the neurons’ metabolism, and others coat the nerve cells’ axons with myelin, a fatty substance that provides electrical insulation and thus controls the speed of communication along neural networks.
Although the brain of a fetus at about eight months after conception weighs only a pound, or about a third of an adult’s, it contains twice as many neurons. Chemical signals called trophic factors influence how individual neurons connect to each other, but the survival of those connections depends on repeated communication across the synapses.
A fetal brain at 24 weeks, with spinal cord at left, has yet to develop characteristic cerebral folding
The brain cannot possibly sustain biochemical reactions across all of its neural connections, and so the weakest connections begin to die, through a process known as pruning. In the last stages of fetal development in the womb, about half of all neurons die. The loss is normal; it eliminates many of the connections that are weak or improper for efficient brain function, leaving behind the strongest and fittest neurons.
FIRST DESCRIBED 4,000 years ago, spina bifida is a malformation of the fetal spinal column that has been linked to a diet deficient in folate, a B vitamin, in pregnant women.
From the Latin for “spine split in two,” the birth defect occurs in 1 to 2 births per 1,000. One or more vertebrae, particularly in the small of the back, don’t grow the bony projections called vertebral arches that point away from the center of the body. Often a cyst bulges outward from the spine, encompassing spinal tissues, cerebrospinal fluid and even parts of the cord itself. Large cysts likely signal severe neurologicalimpairment; a portion of the body’s central nervous system, designed to be safely protected from the outside world behind walls of tissue and bone, lies exposed. When the spinal cord is so compromised as to lose function, the infant may suffer paralysis of the legs and bladder, as well as bowel incontinence.
As a preventative measure, since 1998 all bread, pasta, and flour produced In America contains supplemental amounts of folate. The vitamin, found in green, leafy vegetables, helps the body grow new cells, but how its lack can trigger the disorder remains unclear. Genetics playa role, as the highest incidencerates occur among the citizens of Ireland and Wales as well as their immigrant descendants.
Surgery often can close openings over the exposed portion of a spine and reconstruct misshapen vertebrae, but many impairments remain for a lifetime.
The most dynamic growth occurs in the cerebral cortex, the largest and outermost layer of the brain.During the first months of fetal development, when 250,000 new nerve cells are being created every minute, neurons begin to take on specialized tasks.
First, they inch their way from where they were formed by cell division to their permanent home in other regions of the brain. Most go toward the cortex, but some move into the cerebellum and other portions of the brain. This process, known as migration, is quite remarkable for the distance the neurons must travel as well as their ability to navigate surely along the tangled pathways of the developing brain. Millions of neurons migrate a distance equivalent to a person hiking from Los Angeles to Boston. Amazingly, they manage to arrive at Paul Revere’s house, the U.S.S. Constitution, or Faneuil Hall without ever consulting a map.
Once the migrating neurons reach their destination, they developed axons and dendrites to reach out and make connections with other neurons. Like roads that connect to create a grid for traffic, neurons set up systems of communication that link all parts of the brain. Some pathways receive huge amounts of sensory traffic and become the equivalent of information highways. Others turn into dead ends or decay into crumbling blacktop from lack of use.
You can’t clone a brain. And even if you could, it wouldn’t turn out like the original. Sensitivity to initial conditions in the womb coupled with differences in environment after birth would significantly alter development despite the identical genetic code.
UNDERSTANDING MIGRATION
The brain reacts with extreme sensitivity to anything that influence neuronal migration. Only a few decades ago, neuroscientists believed that each neuron had its own special, predetermined location when it set out on its trek across the brain. Now, researchers have found that neurons take on different characteristics because of their journey and their destination. To take just one example, neurons that process oral communication are not inherently preprogrammed to be speech neurons. Instead, they become speech neurons by migrating to the areas of the brain associated with language.
This discovery prompted new understanding of a wide variety of brain disorders. If something interferes with neurons migrating to their intended destinations and not overshooting or undershooting their targets the results can be powerful. Such disorders as autism, schizophrenia, dyslexia, and epilepsy have been at least partly linked with abnormalities in neuronal migration.
Fetal alcohol syndrome has also been linked to problems in migration. The brain’s hypersensitivity to toxins that impede migration underscores the warnings given to expectant mothers to avoid exposing a developing baby to alcohol, tobacco smoke, drugs, or other chemicals that may interfere with healthy brain development.
WHEN SPERM meets egg, the merger of a father’s and mother’s DNA triggers the start of a new life. Encoded in the tens of thousands of genes that make up a human being are a substantial fraction that will create the brain and central nervous system. You won’t find the child’s personality, emotions, and ideas buried in the code; they arise instead as the brain develops and interacts with its environment after birth. Nevertheless, the explosion of cell development that begins with conception is the first step toward forming the brain and all of the hopes and dreams it will one day contain.
As an embryo develops into a fetus, the brain grows and differentiates rapidly.
DIVISIONS & LAYERS
In its first phases of development, the fertilized egg, or zygote, undergoes a rapid series of divisions. One cell becomes two, two become four, four become eight, and so on until the exponential divisions Create a tiny, hollow ball of hundreds of cells nearly uniform in design.Two weeks after conception, the sphere of cells, still dividing, takes the first step in the series of physical changes to construct a differentiated body and begin the process of becoming human.
First, a dent appears in the sphere. Cells move into the indentation, which folds under the surface of the sphere. The folding creates three layers of cells: an outer layer called the ectoderm, an inner layer called the endoderm, and a middle layer called the mesoderm. In the following weeks, these three layers grow into the tissues that give rise to the body’s major systems: Endoderm becomes digestive tract; mesoderm creates muscles, skeleton, heart, and genitalia; and ectoderm forms brain, spine, nerves, and skin.
Lots of gentle handling produced increased serotonin, a neurotransmitter that dampens aggression, in baby rats. Grown into adults, the rats lived longer and handled stress better.
BUDDING BRAIN
The nascent brain makes its first appearance at about four weeks after conception, when a thin, spoon-shaped layer of cells called a neural plate emerges at the head end of the embryo. Major characteristics of the future brain already are in place just one month into fetal development. Hemispheres later will develop on either side of a groove down the center of the neural plate, creating the bilateral symmetry of the human brain.
As the fetus grows, the bowl of the spoon will become the brain itself, while its handle grows into the spinal cord. And as the neural plate folds to form a tube, swellings in the original spoon shape become the forebrain, midbrain, and hind brain. As they develop, they work together to form the major sections of the brain, from the cerebrum at the top of the head to the thalamus, hypothalamus, cerebellum, and spinal cord at the back and lower end.
As modern humans evolved from their hominid ancestors, their brain development continued with increasing specialization of regions and functions. One hypothesis suggests that the differences between the left and right hemispheres of the human brain can be traced tohumans’ simian ancestors swinging through trees. Grasping one limb after another requires the arms to act independently instead of in unison. Perhaps the ancestors of humans began emphasizing the use of one arm over another, encouraging greater neuronal development in the hemisphere that controlled action on that side of the body.
One of the most pronounced differences between brain hemispheres can be observed in dissection of cadavers. The brain region mainly responsible for speech, the planum temporale, is larger in the left hemisphere of two-thirds of human brains. The left-handed nature of language is evident across time and stage of life. Full-term fetuses exhibit larger, speech-related regions in the left hemisphere than in mirror locations on the right hemisphere. The same was true of Neanderthals, according to the telltale marks on the inside of their 50,OOO-year-old skulls made by contact with their gyri and sulci.
GENDER DIFFERENCES
The two sexes also experience differences in brain function. Men are more likely to be left-handed, dyslexic, hyperactive, and autistic. Women are more likely to suffer migraines and, on average, have weaker spatial functioning. Women, though, generally outperform men in the fine motor skills of their fingers, and they learn to speak their native language earlier and foreign languages more easily than men. The bottom line, however, is that if you were to look at two brains on a laboratory table-one from a man, and the other from a woman-you probably wouldn’t be able to tell any difference.
In men, the third interstitial nucleus of the hypothalamus typically is twice as big as it is in women’s brains. The hypothalamus is crucial to sexual behavior, as well as regulation of body temperature, eating, and drinking. Furthermore, women’s and men’s brains differ in response to orgasm. PET scans show less activity in a woman’s prefrontal cortex and in a man’s amygdala during sexual climax, while both sexes experience more neuronal firing in the cerebellum.
GENDERED BRAIN
THE SEXES DIFFER in cognitive ways. A big one involves spatial orientation. Men typically use mental maps, while women prefer landmarks. Men would likely give directions by saying, “Drive north 2.2 miles, turn east, and drive 1.5 miles,” whereas women would more likely say, “Drive toward the mountains until you see the barn, turn right, and go to the pond.” Small wonder that one sex may get frustrated giving directions to the other. Women take the prize for remembering objects’ locations-where are those keys?- while men win at abstract spatial reasoning, such as mentally rotating objects. As a group, men have a wider dispersal of scores on some mental tests.
PREPROGRAMMING
Much human behavior arises from culture and environment. Some, however, appears to be prewired into the brain. The capacity for language appears to be so strongly encoded that children raised without exposure to any language will make up their own.
Communication is an evolutionary favored social activity that helps humans compete with other animals for resources necessary for life. Similarly, the brain’s ability to process and integrate visual stimuli exists almost immediately after birth. At only a few weeks old, an infant raises its arms to protect itself from the approach of an object. Sight, texture, and size appear to be aspects of object recognition that the brain is prewired to bring together for self-defense.
GROWING COMPLEXITY [ EVOLUTION ( BRAIN DEVELOPMENT ) ]
GROWING COMPLEXITY
If 2,000 neurons are sufficient for simple learning, imagine the explosion of complex behavior that accompanied the growth of neural complexity about 530 million years ago. Larger clumps of neurons in the diverse animal population that seemingly emerged overnight encouraged the flourishing of new animal species. The variety of new species could better react to, and survive, changes in their environments. Ocean life diversified into the ancestors of today’s worms, mollusks, and crustaceans.
The forward tip of the neural cords in the first proto-vertebrates began swelling and folding to create primitive brains. Neural networks in those early brains began to diversifY. Some connections began to specialize in vision. Some took on the function of hearing. Among the sharks, neural connections specializing in smell became hypersensitive, empowering them to detect blood in concentrations as small as 1 part per 25 million of water. That allowed them to smell bloody prey a third of a mile away (and, not coincidentally, strengthened their chances for survival in the constant interspecies combat of evolution).
A developing spinal cord is already visible in a three-day-old chicken embryo developing inside its eggshell.
As animals began crawling out of the ocean onto the shore, around 360 million years ago, their brain didn’t begin anew. Instead, new experiences and new evolutionary developments were laid down atop their existing neural networks. Birds and reptiles added new levels of behavior, and new brain matter developed as well. Mammals put their own layers on top of their evolutionary predecessors. And finally, humans with their gigantic brain added the newest and most complex layers in the wrinkly pink walnut of the cerebral cortex.
Darwin explicitly put humans in the crosshairs of his theory with the 1871 publication of The Descent of Man. Human bodies and brains evolved and continue to do so.
The human brain differs physically from those of other mammals in its size, complexity, and dominance of its cerebral cortex. Just like speed and strength, early advantages in the brain such as analytical power (“How can I trap that animal?”) and capacity for speech (“How can I get others to help me trap that animal?”) improved the odds of early humans’ survival. Advantages spread to new generations and became common.
Networks of synapses constantly compete with each other; roughly like animal species fighting for limited food. Networks that get steady stimulation grow stronger; while others atrophy. Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman calls the process neural Darwinism.
EVOLUTION – GROWTH & ADAPTATION OF THE HUMAN BRAIN [ BRAIN DEVELOPMENT ]
FROM THE single celled product of conception, the human animal grows into a complex, uniquely cognitive being. Evolution has built upon older, more primitive animal brain forms to lead humanity to emotion and rational thought. Over eons of time, neural circuitry has developed to promote and continue to promote individual and collective survival. That’s because the human brain is “plastic,” primed from an extremely young age to learn and change.
A six-month-old girl examines her reflection. From birth, humans appear to be drawn toward faces.
EVOLUTION
THE DEVELOPMENT of the human brain is written in millions of years of evolution, its story still unfolding.
Neurons began to emerge with the appearance of multicellular animals. The earliest neural connections formed primitive networks of cells in tiny life-forms swimming in primordial oceans. Today, such systems can still be found in simple life-forms such as jellyfish.
SIMPLE BRAINS
Animals with only the barest collection of neurons can function with surprising sophistication. The marine snail Aplysia has only about 2,000 neurons, yet it is capable of movement, reaction to touch, sensation, and all of the things that make a snail live like a snail. It even can learn despite lacking a true brain. Aplysia’s neurons organize themselves into clumps called ganglia at various points on its tiny body, creating a maze of connections. These neural clumps can amplifY or tamp down electrochemical signals as they pass from neuron to neuron; its neural connections can be strengthened or weakened just as in human brains. Scientists have found that when they shock Aplysia’s tail, it reacts by reflexits neural network contracts the affected flesh to pull it away from the source of the shock. However, things get interesting when the shock is preceded by a light touch against the snail’s flesh. After a few repetitions, the lowly Aplysia has enough neural complexity to connect the two sensa- tions: touch, followed by pain. In time, the light touch alone, with no electric shock afterward, is enough to make the snail recoil as if in pain.
An octopus’s brain is dime size, but it can solve simple problems such as moving barriers to get food.
CHARLES DARWIN KNEW he had opened a tinderbox when he published On the Origin of Species in 1859. He laid out a theory of evolution through natural selection: Individuals that have a biological advantage are more likely to outlive their peers and pass their edge to offspring. A gazelle that is a bit faster than another may outrun the lion and breed fast children the next day. Cuidado, Darwin wrote in his notebook, using the Spanish for “careful.” Taken toits logical conclusion, even humans fell under his theory-an idea Darwin down-played at first because he knew it would be unpopular.
SEIZURES [ DELICATE BALANCE – THE BRAIN’S EQUILIBRIUM ( THE NERVOUS SYSTEM ) ]
Abnormal electrical activity in the brain produces seizures, which have a broad range of manifestations. Some are so minor that they may occur unnoticed, while others can cause violent spasms and convulsions. Victims may even lose consciousness. They can be a one time event or occur frequently.
A number of things can cause seizures: Serious conditions like strokes, brain tumors, and severe head injuries can generate them, as well as other seemingly harmless things like bright, rapidly flashing lights and low blood sugar.
There are two general types of seizures: generalized and partial. Generalized seIZures involve both sides of the brain from the beginning of an episode while partial seizures begin in specific regions of the brain and may spread to the entire brain. Generalized seizures have several subtypes, from tonicclonic seizures (formerly known as grand mal) to absence seizures (also known as petit mal).
FIRST THEY felt hyperactive and frenzied. Then their body motions became more violent, and they would twitch and convulse. Finally, they fell into a deep trance. And there they remained, these sufferers of the disease encephalitis lethargica, until neuroscientist Oliver Sacks found them in the 1960s-40 years later. As depicted in the movie Awakenings (1990), Sacks gave them L-dopa, which the brain transforms into dopamine. The dopamine levels in the postencephalitic patients had been greatly diminished by their disease. The patients woke up from their stupor, and health seemed to be restored to them.
THE DAMAGE caused by headaches is eye-popping. About 45 million Americans suffer them regularly, and about half of the sufferers find the pain severe and sometimes disabling. The result: lost time from work, play, the day to day stuff of life. Counting only the 30 million who suffer migraine headaches one of the 150 described categories of headaches American victims lose 157 million work days each year.
ALL IN YOUR HEAD?
Victims often describe the pain as throbbing or pounding. Other related symptoms include sensitivity to light, sound, and odor. Some experience nausea, abdominal pain, or vomiting, and some sufferers report seeing auras or streaks of light shortly before the pain begins. Young victims may also complain of blurred vision, fever, dizziness, and upset stomach. A few children get migraines about once a month accompanied by vomiting; such headaches are sometimes referred to as abdominal migraines. About 5 percent of children younger than 15 report having had migraines, compared with 15 percent who experienced tension headaches.
ANATOMY OF A MIGRAINE
Headaches occur when nerve cells that are pain sensitive, for reasons that are still not clearly understood, begin sending pain signals to the brain. These nociceptor cells often act in response to stress, tension, hormonal changes, or the dilation of blood vessels.
Pain from migraine headaches is typically located on only one side of the head, behind the eye.
Some researchers theorize that chronic headache sufferers lack normal levels of pain-blocking neurotransmitters called endorphins, a Greek word that means “the morphine within.” This deficiency means that their pain signals are more likely to cause severe discomfort than those in people who have higher endorphin levels.
Migraines are particularly devastating because of their severity and recurrence. They begin with impulses in hyperactive nerve cells. These impulses tell blood vessels in the head to constrict, and then to dilate. The process releases serotonin, prostaglandins, and other chemicals that inflame nerve cells surrounding the blood vessels in the brain. Specifically targeted are the trigeminal cranial nerve and its connections to the upper spinal cord and brain stem. The result: pain. Researchers long believed migraines arose from the narrowing and expanding of blood vessels on the surface of the brain; now, the most common theory traces migraines to hereditary abnormalities of the brain itself.
HEADACHES In the waning days of the Civil War, Union general Ulysses S. Grant was suffering from a terrible headache. He stopped at a farmhouse in the rear of his army, which had been pressing the forces of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. “I spent the night in bathing my feet in hot water and mustard, and putting mustard plasters on my wrists and the back part of my neck, hoping to be cured by morning,” Grant wrote in his journal on April 9, 1865.
Shortly afterward, Grant was visited by a messenger who carried a note saying Lee, who had refused to surrender the previous day, had changed his mind and would be willing to meet to discuss a formal end of hostilities. “When the officer reached me,” Grant said, “I was still suffering from the sick headache; but the instant I saw the contents of the note I was cured.”
Red indicates pain in a map of common headache sites, none of which is in the brain itself
Grant probably suffered from a muscle-contraction, or “tension,” headache. Typically, a tension headache begins when the neck, scalp, and face muscles are tensely held stiff for a long time. The most usual source is prolonged anxiety, a debilitating form of stress. Grant needed Lee to surrender; Lee’s announcement of his plans took the worries, and the agony, away. “The pain in my head seemed to leave me the moment I got Lee’s letter,” Grant reportedly told an aide as he rode off to end the war.
HEADACHES CATEGORIES
Even as it serves as an indicator that homeostasis is being disrupted, a headache is not a disease per se. Instead, it maya symptom of some other problem. It can manifest itself in response to irritation of blood vessels in the head, or to an injury or imbalance, or to inflammation of bodily tissues, to disorders related to stress-or to a host of other possible triggers. While it may feel as if the brain screams in pain, a headache can only occur outside the brain itself, which contains no pain receptors.
Headaches come in dozens of varieties. An easy way to categorize them is by the ways they cause pain. Muscle contractions such as Grant’s are one of the most common sources, especially among those living with high levels of stress. Dilation of blood vessels is a second typical cause. When arteries expand in the head, they squeeze against surrounding tissues, producing viselike pressure and pain. Fever, migraines, drug reactions, changes in blood pressure, and carbon dioxide poisoning can provoke dilation. Internal traction an abnormal growth in the head, for example is a third trigger. When a tumor presses against other tissues, or the brain itself begins to swell, the pressure causes pain. Inflammation is a fourth common source. Allergic reactions and infections such as meningitis can irritate pain-sensitive receptors in the head. Finally, headaches can occur without an obvious physical cause. These headaches are called psychogenic, meaning they arise in the psyche. They may spring from an emotional problem, as the sufferer converts emotional pain into real, physical symptoms.
The word migraine evolved from the Greek word hemikrania, meaning “half-skull.”
Many of these disorders strike not next to the brain, but in the eyes, sinuses, and other facial organs and tissues. Cranial nerves intimately connect the face and neck muscles to the brain, so it is no wonder pain sensations can spread until they feel as if they overwhelm the entire head.
Treating chronic headaches requires a proper diagnosis. Given the wide range of headaches and their causes, as well as the possibility of triggers working in combination, medical treatment often relies on detective work. At least, however, the efficacy of treatment has advanced since humanity first tried to cure a headache. A thousand years ago, Arabs recommended applying hot irons to the head, while a French medical treatise written in Latin urged sufferers to mix the brain of a vulture with oil and shove it up the nose. Today, modern pharmaceuticals, relax- ation techniques, and proper diet target dilation, tension, and other causes. One of the most effective pain relievers is common aspirin.
Some feedback mechanisms suppress actions in the brain and body. Others excite them. Their delicate balance keeps the body between extremes. To have too much or too little of one can throw the system out of whack.
To take one example, the lack or overabundance of neurotransmitters such as dopamine causes health problems-Parkinson’s disease in one case, schizophrenia in the other. Because the brain and body are so closely interrelated you could think of the glands, organs, bones, muscles, and other parts of the body as functionally integrated appendages of the brain damage to the brain and the rest of the nervous system can knock the body dangerously out of homeostasis.
Physical damage to the brain is an obvious source of homeostatic imbalance. Shrapnel from an artillery shell, tumors and lesions that anse organically, and atrophy or death of neural groups in the brain reduce and sometimes destroy the brain’s ability to monitor the body and respond to its needs. Headaches, seizures (and epilepsy in particular), diabetes, and Parkinson’s disease are examples of the consequences of a body getting out of a healthful dynamic balance.
Treatments vary. Neurochemical treaments seek to replace the dopamine depleted by the death of the brain’s dopamine producing cells. Drugs like levodopa, also known as L-dopa, are able to pass through the blood-brain barrier. Once inside the brain, L-dopa is transformed into dopamine. It works only up to a point, and it can have side effects, including hallucinations. Furthermore, as the disease progresses, larger and larger doses are required to get the same benefits, with an increased risk of bad reactions. The drug interferes with other neurotransmitters, so large doses often have multiple reactions.
DELICATE BALANCE – THE BRAIN’S EQUILIBRIUM [ HOMEOSTASIS ]
THANKS TO THE autonomic nervous system, the human body pretty much takes care of itself without conscious effort. The weather changes but core temperature is maintained, food gets digested, cycles of sleeping and waking follow upon one another, and the body’s status remains fairly even from one day to the next. It’s a system in a delicate balance, self-regulating in an attempt to keep the entire body stable and healthy.
Buddhists in Java engage in meditation, which has been found to decrease stress and anxiety and promote calm feelings.
ABOUT ONE in a hundred Americans older than age 65 suffer from Parkinson’s disease, a neurological condition that mysteriously kills off cells in the brain. They include preacher Billy Graham and former Attorney General Janet Reno. Younger people, like actor Michael J. Fox, can also be stricken with the disease. Symptoms of the disease first appear with the onset of small tremors during voluntary movements. Over time, it becomes harder to initiate motion. Finally, muscles grow rigid, and even making the simplest movements takes extended time and effort. The condition is caused when cells in a region of the brain beneath the cortex that produces and stores the neurotransmitter dopamine die. This region, including the basal ganglia and an area called the substantia nigra (because it appears black in autopsies ), plays a key role in coordinating movement.
HOMEOSTASIS
American physiologist Walter Cannon came up with the word homeostasis to refer to the body’s ability to stay relatively stable while internal and external environments are changing. While homeostasis literally means “unchanging,” the body does indeed change when sensory receptors detect changes in the environment and automatically react, causing the release of appropriate neurotransmitters and hormones to help the body adapt to the world around it. The body then reacts to the changes, those alterations get fed back into the nervous system, and the process repeats itself.
This is known as dynamic equilibrium. It occurs when change after change keeps the body healthy. And it’s complicated. Think of the body’s constant need to adjust heartbeat and respiration, regulate temperature, as well as maintain the smooth functioning of neurons throughout it. Think of how distracting it might be if the brain didn’t adjust to our environment on a regular basis; hearts would beat rapidly long after a moment of fear had passed; the body wouldn’t adjust to changes in temperatute. The unconscious efforts of the brain go by virtually undetected as the body goes about its business.
PATHWAYS / GRAY MATTER [ MESSENGERS ( THE NERVOUS SYSTEM ) ]
PATHWAYS
Pain signals take rwo tracks on their way to the brain. The express line, like a nonstop train between cities, sends signals through the spinal cord and connects directly to the thalamus. While some pain signals are diverted along the way, those that reach the thalamus are relayed to the cerebral cortex, where they quickly get analyzed.
When you cut your finger while slicing an onion, the quick pathway of pain activates the cortex to figure out how much pain you feel and where you feel it. The brain’s quick recognition of the danger may stop you from bringing down the knife blade again and slicing your finger a second time.
The other, slower pathway travels through slow, narrow nerve fibers with frequent synaptic connections, lumbering like a commuter train that stops at every little burg. These sensations register in the brain stem and hypothalamus, as well as in other deep brain regions, before a portion of them reach the thalamus. Effects include longer-lasting aches as well as emotional reactions to pain, such as the sheepishness of realizing you injured yourself through either clumsiness or negligence (or both). These slow-action pains include the unremitting discomfort of chronic diseases such as cancer.
GRAY MATTER
But not all pain sensations terminate in the thalamus. Many halt at a portion of the brain stem known as the mesencephalic central gray matter. It’s a tiny spot that is difficult to locate. But as a conver gence zone for pain impulses, this area is highly sensitive. When lab animals have their mesencephalic gray matter stimulated by electricity, they can be operated on without painkillers. Yet they maintain their sensitivity to touch, heat, and other sensations in the pain- affected body parts.
CAPTAIN AHAB asked his ship’s carpenter for a special bit of work in the novel Moby-Dick. Ahab, who had lost a leg to the teeth of a white whale, hoped a replacement limb might expunge the feeling of “another leg in the same identical place with … my lost leg.” “Phantom” limbs, such as Ahab’s lost leg, have been reported since ancient times. American neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell cataloged many varieties in the Civil War. About 70 percent of phantom limbs proved excrUCiatingly and chronically painful. How could a missing leg create the illusion of existence, or even pain? The answer lies in the brain.
It turns out, the brain has automatic defenses cued up for a quick response to more serious pain. The perception of pain warns the brain of actual or potential tissue damage. The brain’s recognition of pain sets in motion actions to reduce or remove it, and thus the threat.
Most pain receptors consist of the bare ends of sensory nerves embedded throughout all body tissues, except the brain, whose cells cannot experience sensation. These noclceptors react to any ”noxious” stimulation, anything that damages the body’s cells.
Damage makes the cells release chemicals that activate neurotransmitter receptors (substance P is the transmitter for pain) and send pain signals via the peripheral nervous system to the central nervous system, where it may take a while to be felt. Pain doesn’t reach the brain instantly because of the distance the signal must travel; in a tall man, injury to the toe may take rwo seconds to register in the brain.
In the skin, muscles, and joints, cell damage is likely to cause relatively brief and sharp pains. That’s because nerve cells in the spinal cord release natural pain suppressants known as enkephalins, which inhibit the discharge of more pain-exciting neurotransmitters and keep the sensation short. As a result, sharp pains usually fade into dull aches.
Deeper cell damage is more likely to create burns and aches that last longer. The difference lies in the kinds of nerve fibers that transmit the pain signals, and how quickly that information travels.
ASPIRIN
HIPPOCRATES, the founder of modern medicine, knew that chewing willow bark alleviated pain. Thousands of years later, scientists discovered why: The bark contains salicylic acid. When cells are damaged, they release an enzyme called cyclooxygenase-2. That chemical in turn produces prostaglan-din, which signals to the brain that part of the body is in pain. Prostaglandin also causes the injured flesh to swell and become inflamed. Salicylic acid binds to cyclooxygenase-2, blocking the creation of prostaglandin. Less prostaglandin means fewer pain signals reaching the brain, and less inflammation of the cells around the injury.
Damage to the internal organs, or viscera, usually results in dull aches, burning sensations, and gnawing pain. As the pathways for the visceral and somatic nerves of organs and body converge in the spinal cord, the brain sometimes gets confused and assigns visceral pains to other parts of the body that are not actually injured. A heart attack, for example, may seem to cause shooting arm pams.
A healthy brain needs a constant stream of incoming information. Picture what happens without it: When volunteers enter a sensory deprivation tank a body temperature pool of water in which they are forced to go without sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and skin sensations they begin to hallucinate; their brain creates stimuli to stay occupied. Insanity awaits those whose brain starves for external stimulation. Conversely, a healthy body needs the brain to send it signals. Deprived of adequate motion because of nerve damage or a sedentary lifestyle, for example, once strong muscles of the body will quickly atrophy.
Sensory receptors come in five types. The mechanoreceptors create nerve impulses when their physical shape changes in response to external force, such as pressure or touch.
Touching a devil’s club thorn stimulates pressure-sensitive mechanoreceptors and, possibly, pain-sensitive nociceptors in the fingertips.
Photoreceptors respond to light. Curiously, not all photoreceptors exist in the eyes; some are found in the skin. Scientists at Cornell University and at White Plains, New York, found they could combat jet lag and insomnia by shining lights on the back side of the sufferer’s knees. Thermo receptors register heat and cold. Chemoreceptors register the presence of chemicals, such as the sugars in an orange when you bite into it.
Photoreceptors in the eye begin the neural circuitry that registers sensations of visible light.
And last are the nociceptors, which respond to external stimuli that have the potential to create, or do create, pain. The body needs to process painful feelings in order to warn it of possible larger dangers that pose threats to life and limb.
Nociceptors are able to act in concert with other sensory receptors. For example, the warmth of a fire on a wickedly cold day feels good on the feet because it stimulates thermo receptors in the skin. If the toes get too close to the flames, however, extreme heat activates the nociceptors and the sensation changes from pleasure to pain.
MESSENGERS – RELAYING INFORMATION TO & FROM THE BRAIN [ THE NERVOUS SYSTEM ]
THE COMPLEXITY of the brain and how it collects data and reacts to them lies in the very integration of its many neurons. Neural integration not only results in the interplay of sensations associated with motor activity but also influences the ways humans remember, think, and create. In the central nervous system, neurons form organizations called neuronal pools that process information brought in from either the peripheral nervous system or the neighboring neuronal pools.
Reflexes are almost instantaneous. They provide protective, involuntary reactions to a stimulus.
SERIAL PROCESSING
Sometimes, one neuron excites only one other neuron, which excites only one other neuron, and so on, like a single row of toppling dominoes. The result of such “serial processing” is a clear-cut response. You can see a good example when the doctor taps your knee with his hammer, and the reflex action makes you jerk your leg. The links in the chain, called a reflex arc, must include a receptor responding to an external stimulus, a sensory neuron to carry the information to the central nervous system, an integration center in the spinal cord, a motor neuron to carry a return signal, and a muscle or gland to react.
Indigestion can hurt your chest. Packed spinal nerves sometimes confuse paths of pain signals.
PARALLEL PROCESSING
Other times, sensory information branches into many pathways. A single neuron may excite several others, like one domino setting a dozen rows in motion. This causes “parallel processing” of information as circuits diverge and converge in the central nervous system. Each neural circuit delivers different information at the same time.
ITCH & SCRATCH
NERVE ENDINGS sensitive to the sensation of itching proved hard to find. Not until 1997 were these receptors isolated in the skin; their extreme thinness helped hide them from prying eyes. The sensation the itch and its response the scratch-still remain mysterious for neuroscientists. In 2008, findings showed that there are different kinds of itches, which activate different neural pathways. The relief of a scratch depends on the type of itch. Insight into how an itch works can help neuroscientists understand how to control it-and other sensations, like pain.
For example, seeing a kitten may remind you of the cat you raised as a child; the scar on your hand that you got when you bathed your kitty the first (and possibly last) time; the subtle hints your daughter has made in the last few days that she would like to own a pet; or the pleasant purring a happy kitten makes when you gently stroke it. Or all of these associations may appear in quick succession. Each response to the stimulus-“kitten”-is ullique, not only among every human, but also from instance to instance in a single brain, thanks to the addition of new experiences and environments.
Parallel processing creates complexity several orders of magnitude above serial processing. For instance, when you see a driver’s license, you quickly recognize it as such because your brain’s neuronal circuits are assimilating vanous inputs from it at the same time. The shape of the license, its colors, the photograph of a face on one side, the identifying information about the card’s owner, the state’s name and artwork, and perhaps the fact that you saw it being removed from a wallet-all pass along through a variety of parallel circuits to allow a bartender to quickly say, “You’re underage,” or a traffic officer to remark, “You need to renew that next month.” In contrast, it takes a much longer time for a computer using serial processing to analyze the object and declare what it is. Its circuits are not as efficient as the brain’s systems.
SHOCK TO THE SYSTEMS [ THE NERVOUS SYSTEM ( HARMONY ) ]
When you’re startled, the two branches work together, regulating the body without any conscious thought needing to be involved. Thanks to these automatic responses, the brain’s cortex is allowed to remain free to do other things-process sensory information, register emotion, pursue rational thoughts, and initiate voluntary movements. This can happen because the parasympathetic nervous system briefly lowers the heart rate, breathing, and other functions. That gives the cortex time to do its job, assessing any possible threats from the external world. Within a flash, the sympathetic nervous system sends signals to release neurotransmitters that put the body on full alert to prepare for the next step.
Meanwhile, the cortex uses the data it has collected to make a decision on an appropriate response to the startling stimulus. If the cortex perceives a real threat-a tiger on the loose from the zoo, for example-the brain automatically sends signals straight to the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus then releases a stress hormone known as CRF. It increases anxiety, puts the senses on extreme alert, and orders the release of the stress hormones cortisol and epinephrine (adrenaline) from the adrenal glands.
Next, the hypothalamus also signals to the pituitary gland to release hormones into the bloodstream that energize all of the body’s organs. Thanks to all this interaction and coordination, a person is now primed to run from the tiger, climb a tree, or fight back if necessary.
The tiny hypothalamus, less than one percent of the brain, is rich in neural connections and receptors for hormones, and it strongly influences the pituitary gland. Damage to the hypothalamus weakens the immune system and its response to viruses and germs. Conversely, electrical stimulation boosts immunity.
Much of what the brain does takes place beyond our ability to sense it-or appreciate it. In the midbrain’s pons and medulla lie the centers that regulate the vital, everyday functions of life. Think about it: How fortunate you are that you don’t have to concentrate in order to breathe, or make your heart pump blood.
The first rule of the living brain is to go on living. Thus, these crucial areas of the midbrain, called the autonomiC (“involuntary”) nervous system, are not easily overruled by the higher functions of the cortex. While it’s possible to hold your breath while underwater or throwing a tantrum, the midbrain will eventually overrule the efforts of the cortex and force the lungs to inhale. However, some drugs, such as tranquilizers and stimulants, can affect the autonomic nervous system, altering things like the heart rate and blood pressure for good or ill.
TWO BRANCHES
Like day and night, the autonomic nervous system has two equally important halves. They are reciprocal and complementary. The day- light side of wakefulness and work is called the sympathetic branch. It works when the body’s sense of self-preservation, developed over eons of evolution, calls for energy. In extreme cases, the sympathetic branch triggers the so-called fight or flight response. When a threat looms, the body prepares to meet it or quickly escape from it. Blood pressure and heartbeat skyrocket, breathing speeds up, and in a multitude of other ways the midbrain signals to the body to prepare itself for action.
The parasympathetic branch is the calmer, quieter side of the nervous system. It’s responsible for the so-called relaxation response. The midbrain signals to the body to lower breathing rate, heartbeat, and blood pressure. As a result, the brain promotes and recognizes a feeling of well-being.
Modern pharmacology can bring about a similar result, but much of the self-help books of the past few decades have focused on meditation and other forms of stress management to stimulate the parasympathetic branch while soothing the sympathetic.
The peripheral nervous system has two key parts. The sensory division is sometimes called afferent, for the Latin for “carrying toward.” It sends signals from sensory receptors all over the body toward the central nervous system. Sensors in the skin, muscles, and joints are called somatic (“body”) afferent fibers, while those from the internal organs are called visceral afferent fibers.
The other part, the motor or efferent division, sends signals from the central nervous system to the muscles and glands. As these signals cause, or “effect,” changes, they create the motor responses that make the body move. Most nerve cells act as two-way streets, sending signals back and forth between the brain and extremities. Purely afferent or efferent cells are rare.
The motor division also is divided into parts. The somatic nervous system sends signals from the central nervous system to the skeletal muscles. As it is usually under conscious control, this is sometimes called the voluntary nervous system. The other part is the autonomic nervous system, which comprises visceral motor fibers that automatically activate the heart, digestive tract, and other body functions.
As A SCHOOLBOY of nine, Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) was intrigued by a classmate with large, protruding eyes and a knack for rote memorization. The student’s appearance and skills made a lasting impression, one that years later Gall would trace to his theory of cortical localization. All the best memorizers, the German anatom ist recalled, seemed to share these bulging, “ox-like” eyes. So it followed, Gall concluded, that the function of verbal memory is governed by the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. The better the memory, the larger the lobe, and hence the jutting eyes.
Though he did not coin the term- and shuddered at its Usage Gall would become a leading exponentof phrenology, the pseudoscience of interpreting personal characteristics and mental abilities from cranial knobs and knots.
In interviewing hundreds of personalities across the continent and amassing a collection of some 600 skulls-not the interviewees’, fortunately-he determined the human brain to house 27 faculties. Each, he said, is controlled by different areas of the brain.
An ivory phrenological head maps skull lumps for pseudo-scientific analysis
Among those faculties we share with animals, Gall included “reproductive instinct” , “pride” , and” destructiveness, carnivorous instinct, or tendency to murder.” Unique to humans were “poetic talent,” “religious sentiment,” and “wisdom.”
Determining each faculty’s cortical coordinates was simple enough. A large percentage of pickpockets, for example, had a sizable bulge on the side of the head. This area, Gall assumed, was then location of a faculty he called “desire to possess things.” The logic of Gall’s classification system had made it widely appealing by the 1830s.
Phrenology has since been lumped with the likes of astrology, palm reading, and graphology (handwriting analysis). Yet Gall unwittingly contributed to true science. His theory of cortical localization would prompt future neuroscientists to rethink their concept of the brain, paving the way for ground- breaking discoveries at the turn of the century.
THE NERVOUS SYSTEM [ IN HARMONY ( MANY PARTS/HEAD & BODY ) ]
MANY PARTS
Much of what goes mto making music takes place without thought. Professional musicians don’t stop to ask themselves, How do I playa C major chord? Instead, their actions have become automatic. Likewise, some learned actions are so routinely processed that they pass out of the conscious thoughts of the cortex and are pushed deeper into the rote performance of the cerebellum.
The similarities continue. The noise of some instruments may be drowned out by the trumpets and drums, but those sounds are still there, just as the brain’s control of breathing and heartbeat continues regardless of whether they register on the mind. The conductor may step down from the podium and lower his arms; the brain rests and the body falls asleep. Or the pianist may have injured an arm and play badly or not at all, just as the signals to or from the brain may fail, and the body consequently suffers.
HEAD & BODY
The human body has been shaped through cephalization, an evolutionary force that concentrates nervous and sensory tissue at one end of the body. Animals under- going this process enjoy advantages in natural selection. When vision, hearing, smell, and other faculties work with a nearby brain, they provide a rich picture of the world. Specifically, having a head improves efficiency in locating food and avoiding predators.
Each division is responsible for the collection of and response to different stimuli.
A narrow gap between brain and sensory organs, such as eyes, creates the shortest pathways for information to move back and forth between the two. That reduces reaction time. Imagine the alternative: if you had organs of vision in your toes, it would take a moment longer for any images they register to reach a brain at the other end of your body, and another moment or two for the brain to send them feedback. That’s a long delay when the eyes detect a potential threat. There’s not typically a lot of variation from one head to another.
Each brain lies encased within a hard, bony skull, a series of 22 fused bones that protect it. Inside the skull is a series of protective membranes called meninges that cover the brain tissue and blood vessels, and a shock-absorbing liquid called cerebrospinal fluid. The average man’s brain weighs about 3.5 pounds; the average woman’s, 3.2. Taken as a pure ratio between brain size and body mass, that’s not a significant difference.
Like a captain on the bridge of a ship, the brain issues commands atop the spinal cord, which also lies within protective membranes, a column of bones called verte- brae, and cerebrospinal fluid. The brain communicates with most of the body through nerves that pass through the thumbwide bundle of the spinal cord inside the vertebrae, and branch out in 31 pairs of spinal nerves, each serving its own region. A few nerves, such as those that serve the face, connect directly to the brain.
WHETHER IT BE a surprise, a startle, or a scare, how the brain reacts to a situation is determined by the information that is gathered by the nervous system. Through this vast interconnected network, the brain is able to collect data, interpret them, and then react to them in a matter of milliseconds- governing such things as how fast our heart races, how hard we laugh, or how loud we scream. Every reaction, thought, action, and emotion is regulated by the nervous system, which excels at communication and controls.
The shock of an ice-cold victory celebration causes a full-body startle reaction.
HOW THE NERVOUS SYSTEM RUNS THE BODY [ IN HARMONY ]
THINK OF THE brain as a symphony orchestra. When everything goes right, the brain remains in constant communication with the entire body at all times. Sometimes, as when musicians are warming up or the mind’s attention is unfocused, the signals are muted or lack direction. But when the conductor walks to the podium and taps the baton, all snap to attention.
Then, with the down sweep of the maestro’s arms, everyone springs into action. Each musician, like every nerve that registers and transmits information, watches for instructions. Upon recognizing the conductor’s intent, each carries out orders to speed up or slow down, emphasize or downplay a particular action, or otherwise fine-tune the adjustments that create music out of a hundred different sounds-or the thoughts of the brain into physical action.
Just as the conductor of an orchestra directs the flow and tempo of music, so the brain controls the flow and tempo of the body.
Cells in your brain, as in all tissues, have their own genetic code made up of just four nucleotide bases. They’re usually referred to by their first letters: G, C, T, and A, for guanine, cytosine, thymine, and adenine. Out of these letters come the combinations that make you unique.
The conductor, like the brain’s executive function, also is watching for incoming signals. Each musician’s performance makes an impression upon the maestro, who processes the information and calls for any necessary changes. At the same time, the brass section perhaps may be reacting to the percussion without any intervention by the conductor, just as some reflexes travel only from a nerve in the leg to the spinal cord and back again.
As the musicians play together, their individual contributions unIte in harmonious song. Thus, the brain has its many functions that, when added together, lead not only to consciousness, but also to overall health.
MAGNETOENCEPHALOGRAPHY ( MEG ) also relies on magnetism to examine the brain. In this case, it’s the body’s ambient magnetic fields, not those generated by an external machine, that form the basis of brain imaging. These magnetic fields are extremely weak-perhaps only a billionth of the power that causes a compass needle to point toward the north magnetic pole. Yet, when read by sensors placed on the skull, MEG scans reveal the electrical currents created by neural discharges. The resolution is as fine as a thousandth of a second and as small as a cubic centimeter. The MEG scan and EEG are the only observational techniques capable of anything approaching real-time revelations. When a patient thinks a specific thought, it shows up, in progress, on an MEG.
Mental functions also can be localized with a technique called positron-emission tomography, or PET. A radioactive isotope is injected into a patient. Because all radioactive atoms decay into stable atoms at a known rate, the decay of the isotope, which is usually paired with glucose, is recorded and turned into images with computer programs. Like MRI and CT scans, PET scans let observers localize activity inside the brain.
The array of brain-imaging techniques serves like the variety of hammers, saws, and other tools in a mechanic’s toolbox. A scientist observing the brain chooses the right tool based on what kind of information is needed. A CT or MRl scan would be the choice if a doctor suspects the growth of a tumor or physical damage to part of the cerebrum. A PET scan might be the appropriate choice for investigation of deficiencies associated with language or reason. And lack of oxygen use in stroke- damaged sections of a brain would call for a functional MRI.
A patient receives a PET scan to pinpoint regions of the brain that are most active.
True to the rational and observational methods of Descartes and Willis, science has made great strides in describing how the brain’s parts, both large and small, function. But understanding any organ that is “wider than the sky” is not as easy as toting up small pieces of information. The brain is an integrated unit, with its complexity arising from the synergy created by the simultaneous functioning of its billions of neurons and trillions of synapses in nonlinear ways. Science has learned much about movement, sensations, emotions, and the sense of self. Yet much is yet to be gleaned about the most complicated object in the universe. There will always be more to learn about the brain.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) gives a more detailed 3-D picture than a CT scan. An MRI relies on an intense magnetic field generated in a cylinder that surrounds the patient. It allows precise mapping of the physical shape of the brain. Its magnetic field is so powerful that it causes some of the atoms inside the brain to jerk into alignment. Then a series of radio waves from the MRI scanner bounce off the affected atoms and push them slightly out of line. When the energy from the radio signals is turned off, the atoms move back into their magnetic alignment, emitting telltale energy patterns along the way.
Addictive drugs work by mimicking neurotransmitters or altering their work. Brain scans reveal physical changes in the synaptic activity of a drug user. The drug known as Ecstasy, for example, can permanently damage neurons that produce serotonin.
Computers read these minuscule bits of energy and assemble images of cross-sections of the brain. Slices can be placed atop each other, like the layers of a cake, to represent the entire brain in three dimensions, or they can be examined individually, providing a closer look at localized phenomena. Comparisons of MRI scans of a single brain over time can show its growth-or reveal its deterioration.
WHEN THE DENTIST asked British philosopher Bertrand Russell where he felt pain, Russell replied, with humor and honesty, “In my mind, of course.” Russell knew the brain uses the senses to collect data about the world and construct a version of “reality.” Whether that world actually exists independent of the mind makes little difference to the sufferer of a tooth- ache-the pain hurts just the same. In fact, some philosophers, such as George Berkeley (1685-1753), have questioned whether “reality” exists.
In addition to mere structure, an MRI can also capture a snapshot of thought. A variation called a functional MRI, or f-MRI, builds upon the fact that a blood cell’s magnetic properties change according to how much oxygen it contains. Receptor cells use oxygen as they take in signals from surrounding cells; burning oxygen causes cells to require more oxygen-rich blood. As blood surges toward neurons where synapses are firing with thought, emotion, or other impulses, the oxygen they carry gives off a traceable signature of radio waves. Different thoughts light up different areas of the brain in an MRI. The processes of peaking, reading, appreciating humor and music, and recognizing faces illuminate various groups of neurons. MRI techniques thus help localize areas associated with certain brain functions.
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE [ LOOKING INSIDE ( THE AMAGING BRAIN ) ]
PERHAPS NO scientific book of the past half century stirred up as much controversy as The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The 1994 book, by Richard ]. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, begins simply: “That the word intelligence describes something real and that it varies from person to person IS as Universal and ancient as any understanding about the state of being human.” From there, the authors delve into definitions of intelligence and how it can serve as a good predictor for success in life.
Then they argue that different levels of intelligence lead to social outcomes, instead of the other way around a person oflow intelligence is more likely to end up a criminal or unemployed, for instance and that intelligence levels have an observable correlation to biology.
Following the track linking genetics to intelligence, the authors make claims linking racial differences to intelligence, and thus the positive and negative social outcomes that define modern life. If a group of people can’t change their biology, goes this hypothesis, they cannot change their social outcomes.
Does the brain’s biology determine intelligence, and thus lock humans in to paths toward success or failure? It’s a potent question.
DEFINING INTELLIGENCE
Part of the problem lies in the definition of intelligence. Neuroscientists don’t agree on what the word means. Nor do they agree on what intelligence tests are actually measuring. Tests don’t measure motivation, persistence, social skills, and a host of other attributes of a life that’s well lived. Some say, only half facetiously, that IQ tests measure only one’s ability to perform well on IQ tests.
Studies of identical twins have shown that certain regions of the brain are highly inheritable, affecting overall intelligence.
Neurologist Richard Restak likes to deliberately cloud the issue during his lectures by showing students images of two PET scans. Each reveals the level of brain activity of a student doing a problem in a Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices test, which aims to measure “fluid intelligence,” or the ability to solve an unfamiliar kind of problem. In one scan, the image is illuminated in red , and orange, representing an increase in brain activity. In the other, the cool shades of blue and green represent a less intense level of brain function. When Restak asks the students to guess which of the two students scored higher on the Raven’s test, and thus (one assumes) possesses superior intelligence, the students invariably pick the brain lighted up like a Christmas tree. Instead, the student with the less active PET scan posted a higher Raven’s score. The explanation: The brain that finds a problem easy to solve doesn’t have to work as hard.
TYPES OF SMARTS
There are several aspects of intelligence. Most are related, but historically not all have tested what they set out to test. For example, some early IQ tests measured knowledge of facts, which actually is a function of education and memory rather than the ability to reason. In general, however, a person’s performance on a test of fluid intelligence is a good predictor of performance on a wide range of mental exercises. For example, increased fluid intelligence correlates to a high level of “working memory”-one’s ability to remember information temporarily which can range from remembering where you parked your car to which words or number combinations you tried and rejected in doing a crossword puzzle or Sudoku. People with powerful working memories are more focused in solving problems.
Scientists use the term “g-factor” when discussing the general measure of mental ability, found in vocabulary size, mechanical reasoning, and arithmetical computations. They relate it to the properties of efficient neural functioning, rather than the value of knowledge in its own right. The prefrontal cortex, right behind the forehead, is the most likely home for much of the neural processes associated with one’s g-factor abilities. When it’s damaged, a person suffers a variety of impairments to abstract reasoning, and it lights up during brain scans taken during a variety of intelligence tests.
“You have less frontal development than I should have expected,” says the evil Professor James Moriarty when he first lays eyes on Sherlock Holmes in a story by Arthur Conan Doyle. As scientists have discovered, the size of the prefrontal cortex in healthy brains generally correlates to fluid intelligence. (Perhaps Moriarty subscribed to the theory of phrenology and believed cortex size correlated to the bulging of a forehead. It’s not so.)
Psychologist John Raven devised the Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices Test in 1938, a non-verbal test of intelligence in children.
But the size of a cortex doesn’t mean, QED, that biology causes intelligence the same way gravity causes an apple to fall. Identical twins vary in their performance on IQ tests. In some cases, one twin develops schizophrenia or some other disorder, and the other does not. Furthermore, when identical twins are separated at birth and raised separately in similar environments, they show only a 72 percent correlation in intelligence.
FAMILY INFLUENCE
At best, genetics accounts for only a substantial fraction of intelligence. Perhaps heredity sets an upper limit for intelligence (through the potential ability to make neuronal connections), which then becomes subject to other forces. An environment with plenty of books and challenging toys plays a key role in increasing aspects of a child’s intelligence but so does willingness to exercise the brain. Political scientist James R. Flynn noted that IQ scores have dramatically increased over the past several decades in many countries. He attributes the so-called Flynn effect to increases in modern humans’ greater ability to solve abstract problems, possibly from living in a more intellectually stimulating world.
The brain’s ability to rewire neuronal networks no matter how old the nerve cells provides the means to improve mental function. Instead of looking at family or ancestral heritage and deciding it determines mental performance, humans can set about learning new skills and tasks. Challenging the brain may not raise the score on a particular IQ test, but it will help the brain to perform better.
Scientists have long Dreamed of Exammmg how the brain works within a living body. The problem, though, was figuring out how to get inside the head without causing injury or even death. Doctors treating wounds from wars and accidents have been able to get glimpses of living brain tissue, but aside from poking or prodding, have had little to do with experimental observation.
Some early noninvasive attempts included phrenology, the pseudoscience developed in the early 19th century that measured the bumps on the outside of the skull as a means of analyzing the mental powers and characteristics. They stemmed from the theories of a German doctor, Franz Joseph Gall, who argued in the late 18th century that the separate faculties of the brain must manifest themselves in the shape of the overlying bone. Phrenology’s popularity peaked between the 1820s and the 1840s but soon waned as the century progressed.
Overall, at least half of all cases of dementia-formerly known as senility can be traced to Alzheimer’s disease.
Toward the end of the 19th century, a new method of probing the hidden workings of the brain arose, again in central Europe. Wilhelm Wundt, known as the founder of experimental psychology, created a laboratory in the mid-1870s in Leipzig to perform research into psychology. The word derives from the Greek psyche, meaning “mind” or “soul.” Wundt considered his research a way to get at the workings of the mind, which many still considered to be separate from the tissue of the brain.
An angio-MRI of a 27-year-old woman reveals the arteries that provide oxygen to her brain.
In particular, Wundt aimed to examine the elements that made up consciousness and explain how they worked together to create the mind. Wundt concentrated on stimulus-response experiments, as he considered sensation the contact point between the external, physical world and the inner, psychological world. He recorded when and how sensations entered consciousness, including such mundane facts as whether one musical tone sounded higher or lower than another one did.
A contemporary of Wundt’s, the American William James, also took up psychology as a tool to probe the mind. India his famous 1890 textbook The Principles of Psychology, James described processes including the sense of self, memory, movement, and sensation.
Your brain uses about 12 watts of ” power-a fraction of the energy of a household lightbulb.
Assessing the brain’s performance through intelligence testing was another way science attempted to access the living brain. In the 1900s, French psychologist Alfred Binet created the first IQ test as a way to measure intelligence. That test, designed to see which French schoolchildren needed special assistance, became the genesis of all IQ tests that followed.
Meanwhile, in Austria, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology, turned his interest in neurology into the study of the workings of the brain and the ways in which they affect behavior. He predicted, correctly, that someday the study of the physical workings of the brain would dovetail with his observations about unconscious drives.
LOOKING INSIDE [ SEEING THE BRAIN AT WORK ( THE AMAGING BRAIN ) ]
ONCE THE brain’s true purpose was ascertained, scientists began finding new ways to observe it and its functions. Starting with noninvasive methods, like IQ tests, they tried to learn more about the living brain and measure how it worked. These intelligence tests painted a picture of how the brain collected information, processed it, and then made conclusions.
CT scans open windows into the brain’s interior structure.
Peering inside a living brain was virtually impossible-most of what scientists knew abour the brain’s anatomy was based on autopsies. But in the late 19th century, the invention of the x-ray made it possible to take a look inside the skull. In the 20th century, new scanning methods came along and gave greater insight into how the living brain works.
TESTING INTELLIGENCE
ALFRED BINET (1857-1911) made the first serious effort to chart intelligence. In 1905, France commissioned him to create a test to identify students whose intelligence was below average. Binet and his doctoral student, Theodore Simon, devised a series of tasks for children. They then tested how well children of various ages performed the tasks, which gradually increased in complexity. Their work led them to create a scale of normal mental functioning. Binet’s intelligence scores compared a child’s mental abilities with those of h is or her peer group. The test has been updated many times.
A 1937 Stanford-Binet intelligence test includes miniatures and printed matter.
During World War II, the American government gave Army recruits intelligence tests to screen them for war work. Plenty of other groups have been given IQ tests since then, allover the world. If you look only at their scores, you might think humans are getting smarter all the time. New Zealand political scientist James R. Flynn observed that standardized intelligence test scores from 20 countries historically have kept rising by about three points a decade. The reason isn’t entirely clear, but it’s possible that improvements in nutrition, coupled with the more stimulating environments in which children are raised, contribute to greater neuronal complexity.
Today, scientists still wrestle not only with what intelligence is, but also how it can be measured. Harvard University’s Howard Gardner believes at least seven types of intelligence exist, from the mathematical to the athletic.
ANATOMY [ DIFFERENT PARTS & DIFFERENT RESPONSIBILITIES ( THE AMAZING BRAIN ) ]
DIENCEPHALON
In the center of the brain, between the cerebrum’s two hemispheres, lies the diencephalon. It consists largely of three important structures : the Thalamus, Hypothalamus, and Epithalamus. The Thalamus acts as a relay for sensory information on its way to the cerebrum and is crucial to memory and emotions. The tiny Hypothalamus exerts control over the autonomic nervous system and performs other functions, including regulating body temperature.The Epithalamus includes the pineal gland, which drew Descartes’s attentions. Instead of housing the soul, scientists now know it helps to regulate the body’s rhythms of sleeping and wakefulness.
Elements of the diencephalon link THE you left and right hemispheres.
CEREBELLUM
At the back and bottom of the skull rests the cerebellum. Like the cerebrum, it too is divided into halves and deeply fissured. Its role is to coordinate movement and balance. Precise physical activities that must be practiced to be performed well-hitting a golf ball, doing gymnastics, picking a pattern of notes on the strings of a guitar-are processed in the cerebellum. The cerebellum also is known to play a role in emotion and action.
Misunderstanding of the work of neuroscientist Roger Sperry in the 1970s fed the notion that everyone is either “left brained” or “right brained.” Although each hemisphere has special functions, the two halves work closely together in a healthy mind. Humans are whole brained.
MEDULLA OBLONGATA
Where the brain meets the spinal cord is the brain stem. The spinal cord, the central route of nerve cells connecting brain and body, terminates in a 1.2 inch extension into the lower brain known as the medulla oblongata, home to motor and sensory nerves. Here is where the nerves from the body’s left and right sides cross each other on their way toward the cerebrum. Basic body functions such as heartbeat and respiration are controlled in the medulla.
Above the medulla lie the pons and midbrain. Pons means “bridge,” and that’s what it does-it acts as a bridge between the medulla and other brain regions. The midbrain links the pons to the diencephalon and controls reflexes of the ear and eye, such as the jolt the body experiences when startled.
FUELING THE BRAIN
Blood pumped from the heart pushes upward into the brain through two main sets of blood vessels, the internal carotid and vertebral arteries. Spiderwebs of smaller vessels, like distributary waterways at a river’s mouth, send blood into every region of the brain.
The brain uses oxygen III a hurry. While the brain weighs only about three pounds, a mere fraction of body weight, it burns 20 percent of the body’s oxygen and glucose. Most of that energy is mere upkeep, keeping the brain on the razor-sharp edge of action by maintaining the electric fields of the membranes surrounding the synaptic clefts. Actually thinking adds very little to the demand for energy-a fact that is somewhat counterintuitive for anyone who has ever struggled with a particularly difficult math problem or foreign language translation.
To get fuel to hungry brain cells, the body relies on the constant circulation of glucose. It’s a kind of sugar that circulates via the bloodstream. Neurons can’t stock-pile glucose like coins in a bank, so they require a ready supply of this source of chemical energy. Neurons use the fuel of glucose to manufacture and transport molecules of neurotransmitters and enzymes. They also use plenty of energy- half of the brain’s total, in fact-to transmit electro-chemical signals from cell to cell. The body obtains glucose from starches and sugars in the daily diet. Good sources include grain, fruits, and vegetables. During periods of intense concentration, glucose levels decline in brain regions associated with memory and learning. Such a decline can cause a feeling of fatigue in the body and the brain.
AN OLD BRAIN can be an amazingly healthy and creative one. Consider:
Ben Franklin left public service at age 82.
Mary Baker Eddy founded The Christian Science Monitor at age 86.
Robert Frost published his last collection of poems at age 88.
George Bernard Shaw was still writing plays at age 94.
Grandma Moses received a painting commission at age 99.
ANATOMY [ DIFFERENT PARTS DIFFERENT RESPONSIBILITIES ( THE AMAZING BRAIN ) ]
THE FRONTAL LOBE
A portion of the frontal lobe of each hemisphere called the precentral gyrus controls the body’s movements. Oddly, each hemisphere moves the opposite side of the body, as if the brain’s wiring some-how became crossed. Hence, the movements of the right hand and right foot, as well as the rightward gaze of both eyes, are governed by the left side of the brain. This phenomenon has been observed for centuries. Hippocrates noted that a sword injury to one side of the head impaired movement on the body’s opposite side. And while observing combat wounds during the Prusso-Danish War of 1864, German doctor Gustav Theodor Fritsch noted that if he touched the cerebral cortex as he dressed a head wound, the patient twitched on the opposite side of his body. If one hemisphere’s precentral gyrus is destroyed-during a stroke, for instance-paralysis will result in half the body.
In front of the precentral gyrus lie the premotor cortex and the prefrontal fibers. The former organizes the body’s complex physical movements, whereas the latter inhibit actions. Inhibition is useful in a variety of social settings, such as preventing shouting in a quiet movie theater.
THE BRAIN NEEDS regular exercise if its neurons area to remain sharp. Repetition of newly learned tasks helps make those new connections stronger. Without stimulation, dendrites recede and the brain settles into simpler patterns of operation. Neurologist Robert Friedland has shown that posing new challenges to the brain can help in the defense against Alzheimer’s disease.
Perhaps not surprisingly, “Use it or lose it” appears TO be true not on Iy of mental exercise but also of physical stimulation of the brain. The brain is like other organs and works better when the body is healthy. Exercising the body regularly appears to help ward off Alzheimer’s disease, as do reducing body weight, lowering blood pressure, and eating a more healthful diet. General exercise that builds up cardiovascular endurance improves blood flow to the brain. A healthy heart usually is linked to a healthy brain, especially in the brain’s “executive function, ” which is crucial to a slew of mental tasks.
A combination of physical exercise and mental gymnastics protects the brain against deterioration with age. To spur on the brain to make new neuronal connections and protect the ones it has, there are a number of activities to try, such as: ~ Learning a new language . ~ Listening to classical music. ~ Solving mental puzzles and games, like crossword puzzles and Sudoku . ~ Eating a healthful diet. ~ Walking, jogging, or cycling regularly to promote cardiovascular health . ~ Maintaining a healthy weight.
PARIETAL LOBE AND TEMPORAL LOBE
In the parietal lobe lies the somatosensory cortex, which takes in stimulations of touch and other sensations. While lower parts of the brain register pain and pressure, the sensory cortex helps localize such feelings. Damage to the sensory cortex may result in confusion about which part of the body may be registering pain.
The temporal lobe is home to the functions of hearing and appreciation of music and to some aspects of memory. Self-experience also resides in this lobe. Electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe may dredge up intense feelings from the memory-the experience of reliving the past, known as deja vu-or do just the opposite, causing familiar people and objects to become unrecognizable.
At its base, the temporal lobe connects with the limbic system, a series of brain structures also known as the animal brain. This system allows humans to experience intense emotions such as anger and fear as well as react to these feelings.
OCCIPITAL LOBE
Behind the temporal lobe, near the rear of the head, lies the brain’s visual center in the occipital lobe. Far from the eyeballs, which takes in visual information, this portion of the cerebral cortex processes electrical impulses that begin with light waves striking the retina. Wounds to the back of the head injuring the visual cortex can sometImes cause blindness.
ANATOMY [ DIFFERENT PARTS & DIFFERENT RESPONSIBILITIES ( THE AMAZING BRAIN ) ]
FOUR DIVISIONS
Moving inward, we come to the organ itself. The brain may appear to be a Ulllform mass of folded, pink tissue. But a closer look reveals different lobes, regions, structures, and parts that all help regulate body functions, interpret information from the body, and react to stimuli. The brain has four main parts: the cerebrum, diencephalon, cerebellum, and brain stem.
SHAKESPEARE WEIGHS IN on the human brain in his plays:
“Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart, or in t he head?”-The Me rchant of Venice
“The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree.” – The Merchant of Venice
“Her beauty and her brain go not together. ” – Cymbeline
“He has not so much brain as ear-wax.” – Trai/us and Cressida
CEREBRUM
This largest, topmost layer of the brain is the cerebrum. It’s what most people visualize when they use their brains to picture their brains. The external layer is called the cerebral cortex. Its outer por- tion is gray from the presence of billions of nerve cell bodies, while the inner portion is white from the tangle ofaxons coated in their myelin sheaths.
In 1999, scientists discovered that Albert Einstein’s inferior parietal lobe, associated with mathematical and spatial reasoning, was 15 percent wider than that of an average brain.
In the cerebral cortex lies the core of information processing that separates humans from other animals, including reason, language, and creative thought. Homo sapiens has more of its brain in the cerebral cortex-approximately 76 percent-than any other animal. (Chimpanzees rank second at 72 percent, while dolphins have only 60 percent.)
FISSURES AND HEMISPHERES
The cerebrum is divided into parts by deep fissures. The largest of the brain’s fissures is immediately evident to the naked eye. Down the center of the cerebrum, separating it into left and right hemispheres, is the longitudinal fissure. The left and right halves of the cerebrum appear to be nearly mirror images of each other.
While they look alike, the two halves perform and control very different functions. The left hemisphere long has been considered the dominant half because of its role in processing language, but the right hemisphere is gaining new attention for its role in emotions and spatial cognition, as well as the integrative function that helps bring bits of information together to create a rich image of the world.
Connecting the two hemispheres are bands of nerve fibers that allow information to be passed back and forth between the two halves of the brain. The largest bundle, containing about 200 million nerve fibers, is the corpus callosum.
Two divides known as the Sylvi an fissure and central sulcus lie on the outside edges of the hemispheres. Their locations serve as boundaries on a map, dividing the hemispheres further into four lobes. The frontal lobe lies forward of the central fissure. Between the Sylvian and central fissures are two lobes that merge together, the parietal followed by the occipital. Behind the Sylvian fissure is the temporal lobe.
ANATOMY[ DIFFERENT PARTS, DIFFERENT RESPONSIBILITIES( THE AMAZING BRAIN ) ]
THE FIRST STEP to a better understanding of the brain is getting acquainted with its parts. From the protective structures on the outside to the hardworking parts on the inside- knowing where each structure is and how it interacts with the world gives greater insight into brain function and the problems that mayanse.
The eight bones that form the cranium shield the brain from injury.
PROTECTION
To take a tour of the human brain, begin with the crown of the skull, a collection of 22 bones that house the brain and protect it from harm. Except for the mandible (or jawbone), all of these bones are fused together and immovable. The topmost and rearmost bony parts form the cranium, the brain’s tough, protective shell.
Inside, three membranes present themselves to provide more layers of protection. Immediately under- neath the skull is the dura mater, Latin for “hard mother.” The next layer, the arachnoid, overlays the brain’s network of crevasses. Early observers likened it to the spun lace of a spider, giving it a name that means “cob- web.” The lowest of the three membranes, the pia mater (“tender mother”), is filled with tiny blood vessels. It embraces the brain surface like a mother cradling a child in her arms; every dip and rise in the brain matter is form-fitted by the pia. The ridges are called gyri, which means “twisters,” while its grooves are sulci, or furrows.
BRAIN CUSHION
Flowing between the arachnoid and pia membranes IS the brain’s cerebrospinal fluid. This liquid bathes the brain’s gyri and sulci, including the deepest grooves, which are known as fissures. Fluid- filled ventricles-the hollows that some philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas considered home to the mind-curve deep into the brain and connect to the spinal cord’s central canal. Cerebrospinal fluid cushions the brain, provides nourishment for tissues, and perhaps acts as an internal channel of chemical communication.
Layers of coverings combine to cushion, protect, and support the brain.
Poet Lord Byron’s brain weighed 79 ounces, well above the average human brain’s weight of 48 ounces.
PROTECTION
The body has evolved formidable defenses to protect its most vital organ. While capillaries in other parts of the body allow cells to absorb harmful substances from the blood, the brain has the so- called blood-brain barrier with only limited permeability. Thick, tight membranes in the brain’s blood vessels screen out many substances in the bloodstream. Crucial chemical such as oxygen and glucose can cross into the brain, as well as a few harmful ones, such as alcohol and nicotine. Frustratingly, many beneficial chemical compounds, such as drugs designed to attack tumors, are turned back.
Amazingly, the cells that perform the complicated ballet of electrochemical transmission can live more than a hundred years, but they do not get replaced like most other body cells. Except for the hippocampus and the olfactory bulb, where new neurons have been shown to grow from stem cells, the neurons a person has at birth are all he or she will ever have. During the busiest times of neuron generation in the developing brain of a Fetus, about a quarter million neurons are created every minute. They start from precursor cells and then migrate and differentiate.
When a neuron in the central nervous system dies or its long fibers are cut, it does not regen- erate. Medical science currently has no cure for catastrophic nerve injuries of the spinal cord, and once a major communication line to or from the brain has been cut, it cannot be repaired. But new research with neural stem cells sug- gests neurons may yet be coaxed into regeneration.
REEVE’S RESEARCH
RESEARCH INTO HOW TO regenerate nerve tissue after injuries like transections, a complete severing of the spinal cord, owes a great deal to the late actor Christopher Reeve. In 1995, Reeve shattered a cervical vertebra in a horseback riding accident and became paralyzed from the neck down, a condition known as quadriplegia. The injury was not quite a transection-he eventually regained some sensation-but nevertheless proved devastating. His public appearances in a wheelchair until his 2004 death drew attention to spinal injuries and ultimately raised millions of dollars to help seek a cure for nerve damage.
Tim Berners-Lee, a creator of the World Wide Web, likens the brain’s complexity to the nearly infinite capacity for Web sites to connect to each other. “A piece of information is really defined only by what it’s related to,” he said. “The structure is everything. There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected.”
Communicating with another cell, neurotransmitters journey across a synapse.
Transmissions between neurons take place in two stages. The first is electrical. An electrical discharge travels the length of an axon. When it reaches the axon terminal that abuts the synaptic space, it sets the second stage in motion. This but- ton, like the rest of the nerve cell, has an outer wall called a mem-brane. Its envelope contains a solu- tion of messenger chemicals. These electrically charged chemicals move in the solution, constantly poised to respond to an impulse and exit through small openings of the membrane and into the synapse. When an electrical impulse arrives from the axon, if it is of sufficient strength it trips a trigger that releases one of the messenger chemicals, called a neurotransmitter, from storage in the button.
NEUROTRANSMITTERS
The neurotransmitting chemical then enters the synapse. Like a ferryboat crossing a small stream, the neurotransmitter traverses the synaptic cleft and attempts to link up with the dendritic membrane of a receptor cell. The journey across the synapse takes only a thousandth of a second. The receptor cell’s surface contains specially shaped docking sites, so particular neurotransmit- ters can dock only at the appropri- ate places, just as a key needs exactly the right shape to fit into a lock. The neurotransmitter either excites the receptor cell into action or dampens it into inaction. Once the receptor cell has been stimulated by the neurotransmitting chemical, the communication reverts to an elec- trical signal. It travels the length of the new cell until it reaches the synapse of another receptor cell, and starts the process all over again. After they have done their job in the synaptic space between nerve cells, neurotransmitting chemicals are reabsorbed by the transmitting neuron and prepared for rerelease (a process known as reuptake) or broken down and metabolized by enzymes in the synaptic space. It sounds like a lot of work, but neurons can repeat the electrochemical firing process up to a thousand times a second.
WAKING IN THE middle of the night on the eve of Easter, 1921, German-born pharmacologist Otto Loewi (1873-1961) recalled an inspiring dream that gave him an idea for an experiment that would shatter scientists’ conception of neural communication.
Most turn-of-the-century brain Scientists believed nerves sent impulses via electric waves, firing sparks across the synaptic gap, neuron to neuron. In this way, they thought, motor intentions born in the cerebral cortex could be transmitted to receptor muscles and organs throughout the body. Only a handful of scientists-most notably Loewi and his English counterpart, Henry Daleargued that chemical neurotransmitters are released at the synapse. An accelerant, noradrenaline, causes the heart to beat more quickly, Dale said. An inhibitor, acetylcholine, induces the opposite. Yet Dale was unable to extract either chemical organically, and lacking proof, his case remained dormant.
Then, as Loewi recalled, a fateful frog experiment flashed to him in a dream, and he dashed to his laboratory. He began with two frogs’ hearts. Stimulat- ing the vagus nerve of one to slow its beating, he applied a residual solution from this donor to a second heart, from which he’d severed the vagus nerve. The second heart immediately slowed, as if discouraged by an unseen force. Loewi’s hypothesis was correct: A neurotrans- mitter (acetylcholine) had slowed the first heart, leaving a trace fluid-enough to slow the second, isolated heart.
Precursors to axons and dendrites, in yellow and blue, respond to nerve growth stimulation.
The brain devotes huge amounts of neural circuitry to the hands, lips, and tongue.
Dozens of neurotransmitters have been identified, and more discoveries are expected. Certain neurotransmitters make muscles contract, help regulate sleep, and block pain. Research into the role of neurotransmitters in mental and physical health is constantly expanding, and neurotransmitter disorders have been linked to Parkinson’s disease, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophre- nia, and a host of other illnesses.
NEURONS AT WORK [ CONNECTIONS / ACTION / GROWTH & SUPPORT / PLASTICITY ]
Neurons serve different functions. Motor neurons carry impulses to activate glands and muscles. Sensory neurons send impulses from the skin and other body parts to the central nervous system. Interneurons, residing in the brain and spinal cord, integrate the signals and are crucial in making decisions. Thus, neurons allow for information from the body to reach the brain, be processed, and sometimes result in responses.
Some liken the neuron to an old- fashioned, landline telephone. The body of the neuron compares to the body of the phone, where sig- nals are processed. The telephone receiver compares to the dendrites and their ability to gather informa- tion. And the axon compares to a telephone line, sending informa- tion processed in the phone body along an electrically conductive wire. It has the potential to pass information along to any other phone on the planet
NEW CIRCUITS
IF NEURONAL CIRCUITRY rewires itself in response to stimulation, do the brains of teens raised on the Internet and high-tech gadgets differ from those of older genera- tions? The answer most likely is yes. UCLA psychiatrist Gary Small believes tech-savvy children strengthen synaptic connections for electronic communica- tion while their circuitry for a face-to-face world, such as reading body language, fades. Meanwhile, late adopters of technology lag in their ability to master new communication media.
MAKING CONNECTIONS
The human brain contains ill the neighborhood of 100 billion neurons. Each neuron reaches out toward others with an array of dendrites and axon terminals. Each is capable of communicating with any other and, in the process, forging thousands of synaptic connections through the thickets of dendrites and axon terminals. All told, the brain has hundreds of trillions of synapses. No computer can match the human brain for its complexity and its potential for creative thought.
Communication occurs where two neurons come together. Camillo Golgi, a contemporary of Ramon y Cajal’s, believed that neurons physically touched each other, forming a continuous net- work of neural fibers. Ramon y Cajal disagreed. In his sketches, he painstakingly drew neurons whose dendrites invariably terminated at a tiny gap that prevented them from touching other neurons. His drawings did not lie.
In the synaptic cleft, a neuron communicates with its neighbors by issuing electrochemical commands that may be strictly localized or extend the length of the longest chains ofaxons.
PLASTICITY
Neurons are not physically bound to each other like so many lengths of pipe, so they have the flexibility to make, break, and remake relationships with other neurons. The ability to reshape neural interac- tions in the brain is referred to as plasticity. The brain’s ability to rewire itself helps it stay sharp.
The number of synapses may be as high as one thousand trillion, or the number 1 followed by 15 zeroes.
As the brain ages, it loses individual neurons, but it retains its power to form new connections that increase the mind’s complexity. In short, if new educational experiences challenge the brain to form new synaptic connections, its neurons will do more with less.
Experimental data with labora- tory animals demonstrate the principle of “use it or lose it.” When lab animals are placed in an environ- ment with challenging toys, their brains develop a far greater number of neuronal connections than those raised in a dull environment. The brains of animals from stimulating environments will even weigh more because of the greater number of synapses.
ANATOMY OF A NEURON [ NERVE CELLS ( THE AMAZING BRAIN ) ]
Each neuron has a main cell body. Like all cells, the neuron contains a nucleus and an exterior mem- brane, which sometimes receives electrochemical messages from other neurons. Chains of neurons send messages from the body to the brain: “Here is pain, in the left wrist.” “Here is the odor of soup.” “Here is a stony surface beneath the feet.” Chains also send mes- sages from brain to body: “Shake your hand “”Eat. “”‘Take a step. “
Each neuron has an array of branching fibers called dendrites that extend outward toward other neurons. Dendrites expand the surface area of the neuron, increas- ing its sensitivity to its neighboring neurons. While some neurons have only a few dendrites, others have hundreds. They act as receptors for signals traveling from other neurons, carrying information toward the main body of the nerve cell.
Each neuron also contains one electrically sensitive fiber called an axon extending from one end of the cell body. Axons may be as short as a fraction of an inch or as long as several feet, as is the case with axons extending from the spine to the toes. At the axon’s terminal end, as many as 10,000 branches spread out toward the dendrites of other neurons. Every branch terminates in a knoblike projection, like the business end of a paper match. These bulbs are called axon terminals, synaptic knobs, and boutons, or buttons.
Santiago Ramon y ajal, in a 1906 portrait, documented the existence of synapses.
OFTEN THE spirited competition between two great minds can yield amazing discoveries. Such was the case between Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852-1934) and his Italian contemporary, Camillo Golgi (1843-1926), who shared the Nobel Prize in physi- ology or medicine in 1906. Ramon y Cajal was recognized for his deduction on the anatomy of a neuron; Golgi, for the staining process that made that deduction possible. Like most scientists at the time, Golgi held that neurons operate as one continuous, tangled network. Nerve cells must be fused, he said, to pass electrical impulses. Ramon y Cajal, howeveG envisioned chemical codes traveling across a synaptic gap between a single axon and the dendrites of the next cell. In 1887, Ramon y Cajal learned of Golgi’s staining technique and realized its superiority. He modified it, finding it worked well with thicker sections of nervous tissue. Bird sam- ples and tissue from younger animals were best, he surmised, because their axons lacked the protein sheath that obscures most nerve fibers. When impregnated with silver nitrate and viewed by microscope, these nerve cells jumped out as inky strokes on a yellowish background. La reazione nera-“the black reaction,” as Golgi called it-illuminated the infinitesimal as well as the road toward Ramon y Cajal’s revelation.
Around the length of most axons lies a special wrapping of fatty tissue called a myelin sheath. The sheath is formed by two kinds of glial cells, called Schwann cells in the peripheral nervous system and oligodendrocytes in the central nervous system. The wrap is not continuous; small gaps called nodes of Ranvier separate the cylinders of fatty tissue that surround the axons. The axon’s encompassing myelin acts as insulation, speeding the transmission of information in the form of nerve impulses moving at 9 to 400 feet per second.
When an electrical impulse reaches an axon terminal, it communicates across a tiny gap, called a synapse, separating it from the dendrite of another neuron. A few can connect directly with tissues of the skeletal muscles and glands, allowing direct communication.
Neurons differ in shape and complexity. Most, in particular the vast majority of those in the brain, are multipolar-they have one axon and a multitude of dendrites. The rest of the neurons are bipolar or unipolar. The former can be found in the retina, where neurons have a single dendrite. The latter, found in the peripheral nervous system, have a single extension from the main cell body that divides, like the cap of the letter “T,” into branches for an axon and dendrites.
THE FUNDAMENTAL units of the brain, too small to see in Willis’s time, are two types of nerve cells. One type, the neuroglia (or glial-“glue”- cells), has the rather pedestrian task of supporting the nervous system. Neuroglia play a role in guiding neurons toward making connec- tions, promoting neuron health, insulating neuronal processes, and otherwise influencing neuronal functioning and, thus, information processing in the brain. Glial cells continue to divide over the course of a lifetime and fill in spaces in the brain. Glial cells come ill SiX varieties, with some playing a key role in physical health by attacking invading microbes.
The human brain has about 100 billion neurons and about 50 trillion neuroglia.
NEURONS
The other type of cell in the brain is the nerve cell, or neuron. In the late 1800s, a Spanish neuroscientist, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, used a special solution containing silver to stain nerve cells and examine them under a microscope in great detail. Ramon y Cajal’s method worked on only about one in a hundred cells. Nevertheless, he was able to observe enough of the sil- ver-encrusted neurons to describe them in vivid detail. The nerve cell was the “aristocrat among the structures of the body,” he said, “with its giant arms stretched out like the tentacles of an octopus to the provinces on the frontier of the outside world, to watch for the constant struggles of physical and chemical forces.”
Seen en masse in the outer regions of the human brain, neurons appear gray to the naked eye. Hence, scientists exploring the brain described neurons as gray matter. When Agatha Christie’s fictional detective Hercule Poirot brags of the detec- tive work of his “little gray cells,” he is praising his neurons.
Today’s scholars of the human brain and mind owe a great debt to Thomas Willis. Working in England in the middle of the 17th century, he meticulously observed and cataloged the anatomy of the human brain through dissection. Working in a medieval house at Oxford known as Beam Hall, Wil- lis-a short man with a mop of hair an observer once described as “like a dark red pigge”-cut open cadaver skulls to observe and examine the brains and nervous tissue inside. He snipped the nerves that held fast to the nose and eyes. Then he flipped the brain to gently remove the membranes clustered around the nerves, veins, and arteries at its base. Finally, he held up the brain and described it for his audience of natural philosophers, doctors, and the merely curious who had assem- bled to watch the spectacle.
Watching carefully, Willis’s assis- tant sketched the brain as he saw it laid bare. That anist, who illustrated Willis’s 1664 book Cerebri ANATOME (Anatomy of the Brain), was none other than Christopher Wren, who went on to design St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Wren’s careful drawings of the human brain reproduce with nearly photographic clarity the contours and divisions easily recognized by modern medical students.
“I ADDICTED MYSELF to the opening of heads,” wrote Thomas Willis, the founder of neurology. Willis (1621- 1675) found direct examination of the human brain so much more enlightening than the course of study that had dominated medicine for 2,000 years: reading the works of Aristotle and Galen.
Willis Dreamed of nothing less than to “unlock the secret places of man’s mind.” He performed countless autopsies during his practice as a doctor in Oxford, England. He knew that the classic descriptions of the brain didn’t match what he saw with his own eyes. Thus, he set about removing and dissecting brains.
Wren developed a revolutionary method of inserting chemicals into the blood vessels of animals to better highlight the networks between them. Working with Willis, Wren injected india ink mixed with a hardening agent into vessels entering the brain. The ink made the vessels stand out like rivers and their tributaries drawn on a map.
A BETTER ASSESSMENT
Willis examined the com- plicated flesh of the brain and discarded the notion that its key functions lay in its ventricles, or spaces, where the ancients had conceived of spirits flowing and animating flesh. Instead, he correctly settled on the substance of the brain itself as the location of all the action.
Christopher Wren’s 1664 drawing traces them brain’s blood supply.
Willis fancied fanciful language. He likened the brain’s two main hemispheres to a pair of military towers, stronger for their reliance on each other. He also compared two masses that shared an artery to two provinces bordering a river. But in the significance of his observations, Willis, who was a founder of the Royal Society, stayed true to sCience. He argued that in the brain’s convoluted folds and wrinkles, all memories, ideas, and passions found a home. All had a physical basis in the brain, he said. His studies became the first scientific investigation of the brain and nervous system. He called his work neurologie.
Willis’s dissections were crude by modern standards. Yet neuroscientists continue to follow the methods of Willis and Descartes: Look at the brain and the nervous system. Examine their parts. Trace the workings of the small bits and try to assemble them into a greater whole.
How far down the rabbit hole can the process go? Today’s neuroscientists are examining not just molecules, but also the atoms- and subatomic particles-that the universe of brain chemistry comprises. Like peeling an onion, each layer takes the researcher deeper and deeper, closer to the heart of the matter.
He examined the cerebellum, cerebral hemispheres, medulla oblongata, and other distinct parts. He tried to show how damage to particular areas of the brain might correspond with symptoms of diseases observed before death.
Willis experimented on a dog to demonstrate that blood reached the brain even if all but one artery were tied off. He got the idea from a human autopsy. The man had complained of headaches, but they went away and he lived for years. After the man’s death, Willis’s autopsy revealed that one carotid artery had become clogged, while the other had grown larger than normal. Willis guessed that the initial blockage of one artery had caused the head- aches, and the enlargement of the other had made them disappear. Willis and his experiments with a dog set him on a path any modern scientist would have recognized: observe, hypothesize, and test.
BRAIN OR SOUL – KNOWING ITSELF [ THE AMAZING BRAIN ]
Descartes saw no physical soul in his tours of the body. Instead, he conceived the soul as noncorpo- real and thus above the mechanics that animated all flesh. Operating within the machine but not part of it, the soul oversaw humanity’s consciousness, will, and all other attributes that separate mankind from the animals. Furthermore, he said, “There is only one soul in us, and that soul does not have in itself any diversity of parts.”
Where, specifically, could that soul, or mind, reside within a person? Descartes sought his answer by going to his “books.” Dissecting the brains of calves-even though they supposedly had no souls-Descartes settled on a tiny gland deep in the brain. The pineal gland appeared to reside in a central location where nerves and the ventricles, or spaces, of the brain converged. Thus, he thought it a perfect candidate for the role of central actor in the drama of perception and action.
The turning of clock gears once provided a simple, mechanical metaphor for the brain.
OUR UNDERSTANDING of how the brain functions often is expressed in the language of metaphor. The brain is sometimes a computer, a phone bank, a black box. The choice of metaphor often builds upon the dominant technology of the day.
Rene Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher, likened the brain to the animated statues in Paris’s Royal Gar- dens of Saint-Germain. Descartes described how the weight of a visitor’s foot on particular garden tiles opened or closed hidden valves and redirected water flowing through a network of pipes. Streams of water flowing inter- nally caused the statues, called automatons, to move. Descartes pictured the mind as an engineer who chose to open or close certain valves and redirect vital fluids through the brain’s ventricles.
With the dawn of the industrial revolution, scientists turned to clockwork mechanics for metaphors. Philosopher Gilbert Ryle coined the phrase “ghost in the machine,” a bodiless substance somehow throwing switches and mov- ing axles and gears, in framing one of the popular theories about the mind.
Telephone metaphors arose in the 20th century but were not complex enough to describe the vast, organic circuitry of the brain. The function of brain circuitry and the importance of neuronal networking gave rise to metaphors including computers and the integrated complexity of the Web. But even the most sophisticated computer cannot rewrite its own programming or be aware of its own existence. The brain so far has eluded the perfect metaphor.
“Let us then conceive here that the soul [mind] has its princi- pal seat in the little gland which exists in the middle of the brain,” he wrote, “from whence it radiates forth through all the remainder of the body by means of the animal spirits, nerves, and even the blood, which, participating in the impressions of the spirits, can carry them by the arteries into all the mem- bers.” Inside the pineal gland, at an infinitesimally small point, Des- cartes envisioned the mind orchestrating the actions of the body.
This dualism separating the mind and brain has been thoroughly challenged by modern science. The mind cannot exist without the brain; damage to the brain results in compromises to the mind. Nevertheless, the view espoused by Descartes still colors our view of ourselves to this day. Neurologists treat disorders of the brain. Psychiatrists and psychologists treat disorders of the mind. Only now, as neuroscience begins to tease out the biological processes at the root of emotional and behavioral illnesses, are the mind and brain coming together again.
Thus was born a conundrum that has sparked debate for many centuries. It’s called the mind-body or mind-brain problem. Attempts to solve the problem had to await the rebirth of the Renaissance. Direct observation and systematic testing of hypotheses provided the keys. The first direct, systematic observation of the human brain occurred in the 1300s when Italian medical schools began allowing human cadavers to be dissected. Authorizations came slowly at first, with one university permitting only one male and one female body to be cut up each year. With time, however, human autopsies became more commonplace. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) drew his extensive knowledge ofanatomy from dissecting bodies. He fashioned a wax cast of an ox brain and assigned functions such as imagination, reason, and mem- ory to its various parts. Without a way to test his hypothesis, how- ever, he left room for disagreement
Are you a morning or evening ” person? Your brain is wired to prefer one or the other.
about what he observed. Critics said the part of the brain Leonardo assigned to the function of imagination was more likely related to sensation. As it was close to the sense organs, they said it must be the home of Sensus Communis, or common sense.
COGITO , ERGO SUM
More than a century later, mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes aimed to ascertain more about the brain, and with greater clarity and certainty. The way to ascertain things with certainty, he believed, was to break them into their smallest parts and solve the pieces first.
Descartes began in the 1620s by addressing how humans know about the world. He wondered whether he could trust the reality he perceived with his senses. Such questions flourished in an age when Galileo and Copernicus were rewriting the laws that governed the movement of celestial bodies. Descartes knew that the rising and setting of the sun were functions of the Earth’s rotation instead of the physical movement of the sun around the Earth, but his eyes tricked him into believing the sun actually rose in the east and set in the west. To get at the heart of how he could know something with certainty, Descartes sat inside a Dutch inn and pondered the nature of knowledge. He looked at the furniture and asked himself how he could know for certain it existed. The answer: he could not. All he could settle on was that his
A 17-century Jamestown colony skull shows signs of brain surgery.
William Macewen removed a tumor from a young woman’s brain in 1879. She survived the surgery.
American physician Harvey Cushing (1869-1939) removed more than 2,000 brain tumors.
Portuguese doctor Antonio Egas Moniz performed the first prefrontal lobotomies on humans in the 1930s. While the surgery, which cut key fibers in the frontal lobes, had the desired effect of calming agitated patients, it also drained them of emotion. Lobotomies now are considered radical procedures.
perception of the furniture existed. His consciousness, his awareness of the world, lay beyond the pale of any doubt. Cogito, ergo sum: I think, therefore I am, he said, and thus the ultimate reality of the world lies in the mind’s perception of it. To Descartes, if a tree falls in a forest and there is nobody there to hear it, the lack of perception guides the answer as to whether it makes any sound.
DESCARTES DISSECTS
Not content to just consider the function of the brain, Descartes began to physically examine brain and nerve specimens to gather more data. He bought the car-casses of slaughtered animals at the butcher shops of Amsterdam and dissected them to learn more, through his observation, about the brain, nerves, and body. “These are my books,” he told visitors who asked to see his library.
Despite adopting first principles that demanded SKEPTICISM, Descartes took some leaps of faith as he examined brain and body. He considered nerves to be tubes that swelled and pulsated with living spirits, which pushed and pulled at muscle tissue. Nerves swollen with animal spirits could pull a foot back from a fire or turn the gaze from one object to another. Much of the action of movement was pure reflex, he said, carried out independent of will. (It’s not hard to see where this idea arose: Push your fingertip into a candle flame and see whether the idea to remove it occurs before you yank it back to safety.) According to Descartes, mechanical operations of the body and brain, working like an elaborate clock, recorded images through the eyes, engraved memories in the mind, and moved the body through the coordination of nerves.
Centuries later, Galen, a Roman physician who lived in the eastern Mediterranean in the second century of the Christian era, went beyond such mental exercises to test the brain for himself. He took a more hands-on approach and cut the sensory and motor fibers in pigs’ brains to observe the results.
THE BRAIN
Galen became the first to speculate that particular functions are carried out in specific parts of the brain. Furthermore, as a healer to wounded gladiators, Galen peered into holes rent in human bodies by the violent combat of the arena. He made rudimentary descriptions of the body’s major organs and fleshed out the description of what he saw as the varieties of human spirit. The liver created desire and pleasure, he said. The heart gave rise to courage and the warmer passions. And the brain contained the rational soul.
Vital spirits swirling in the spaces of the brain carried the spark of human intelligence. He believed they navigated throughout the body via a network of hollow nerve fibers. The brain’s instructions thus moved through tunnels like puffs of wind in pneumatic tubes.
Feelings, understanding, and consciousness arising in the physical structure of the brain? Unseen spirits causing the physical body to move? These were ideas that raised serious questions. If the qualities of thought that set humans apart from other animals-be it the sense of self, the mind, or the soul- resided in a physical organ, where, exactly, could such thoughts be found? And if thoughts and feelings had no substance, how could they act upon the physical matter of the human body?
Aristotle’s teacher, Plato, reasoned that the mind had to exist inside the brain because of geometry and pure logic. The brain was round, he said, and close to the perfect roundness of the sphere. It also inhabited the part of the human body closest to heaven.
THE BRAIN
The idea that the mind survives the body's death appears quite ancient. Burial sites from 100,000 years ago reveal bodies interred with tools and food, possibly to help on journeys in the afterlife. Cave art possibly depicts spirit worlds.
Plato and other Greek philosophers theorized about the existence of a force that kept people alive and left them at death. They called this force psyche, or soul, and several said it resided in the brain. Some split the soul into three spirits. Humans and all living creatures took in life-giving essence from pneuma, or air. As pneuma moved through the body, it changed in ways that animated and strengthened its host. Digested food provided energy for the liver, where the pneuma became “natural spirit.” This spirit traveled to the heart to become the “vital spirit.” Then it traveled to the brain, where it transformed into the “animal spirit” that creates the conscious mind. Plato considered the soul that resides in the brain to be immortal, surviving the death of the body.
THE BRAIN should need no introduction. You should know it intimately. Afterwards all, the brain is what makes you you. But it’s a paradox that the organ that lets you know and connect with world understands so little about itself. Now, thanks to stunning research building upon decades-no, centuries-of investigation, science is peeling away the layers of mystery to reveal how three pounds of flesh create an entire universe inside your head.
A magnetic resonance image of the human brain reveals it’s complex internally structure.
KNOWING ITSELF – UNDERSTAND THE BRAIN
IT’S NOT MUCH to look at. Hippocrates , the Greek healer identified with the birth of medicine more than 2,000 years ago, thought it was made of moist phlegm. English philosopher Henry More, writing in the 1600s, compared it to bone marrow, a bowl of curds, or a cake of suet. Modern day neurologist Richard Restaksays it resembles nothing so much as a large, wrinkly, squishy walnut. Looks can be deceiving.
The brain, a three-pound chunk of organic matter, is not only the body’s most marvelous organ, it is the most complicated object known. It is “wider than the sky,” wrote poet Emily Dickinson. “For, put them side by side, / The one the other will contain / With ease, and you beside.”
It is humbling to consider the brain and all that it does in every moment of our lives. In this corrugated mass of flesh, a staggeringly complex symphony of electrochemical reactions plays out every second of every day. Much of it does so without need of any conscious conductor to direct the ongoing melody.
Nerves and spina l cord fan out from the brain in this stylized view of the neck and head.
The brain makes the lungs expand with the inrush of air, the heart pump blood, and the immune system fight off infection. It monitors pain and pleasure, signals when to eat and when to sleep, houses memones and thoughts, and manufactures dreams and ideas. It processes sounds and sights, smells and tastes, and feelings ranging from the subtle to the sublime.
THE HUMAN ORGAN
Beyond the work the brain does automatically comes something far different than mere mechanics. Out of the human brain arises consciousness-the unique ability of Homo sapiens, “thinking man,” to be aware of being aware. Consciousness, sometimes referred to as mind or possibly as soul, is difficult to define. A person in a deep sleep or a coma lacks an awareness, an alertness, that a waking person possesses. This heightened state of knowing about the world, and knowing about the knowing, is part of the definition.
The conscious brain chooses and acts. It assembles words through language and communicates ideas. It commands muscles to move, directing the backhand volley of a tennis racket and the driving of a race car. It allows parents to recognize their children, and children to bond with their parents. It is responsible for Shakespeare’s plays, Mozart’s music, and Einstein’s mathematical formulas.
THE BRAIN AT WORK
Truly, the thoughts, feelings, and memories that arise in the human brain are what define the species as well as being what make each person a ullique member of the human family.
[ External stimuli can physically alter the brain. For example, stress weakens the encoding of memories ]
All of these marvels occur beyond the resolution of the human eye. As it labors, the brain does not expand like the lungs or contract like a muscle. It carries out its work electrochemically at the molecular level. Much of the process of observing the brain rests on the ability to scan its interior with sophisticated computer- generated images requiring the use of x-rays, radioactive isotopes, and magnets. Small wonder, then, that only recently has science been able to examine the brain in detail and begin to explain its workings. Relying on macroscopic observation alone, research into the brain started extremely slowly.
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