• Question: In your opinion what is the most interesting thing about the human brain?

    Asked by anon-179095 to Stephen, Claire, Amy on 13 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Stephen Baillargeon

      Stephen Baillargeon answered on 13 Jun 2018:

      The fact that a single brain may or may not contain several minds. People can survive functionally after losing basically any individual part of their brains. If you took each half of your brain and put it in two different bodies (giving each of them a brain stem and a couple replaceable not very unique parts), each body would act like you would if you had severe brain damage. There’s a YouTube video or two that explain this concept better than I can, but I find it immensely interesting.

    • Photo: Amy Pearson

      Amy Pearson answered on 13 Jun 2018:

      Plasticity, without a doubt. Brains are immensely capable of adapting to different kinds of damage, or developing new connections when you gain a new skill. Brains are more plastic in childhood, which is echoed in the rate at which children are able to adapt and learn new skills, but the brains of adults are still capable of change. One example is London taxi drivers who have taken *the knowledge* (testing their ability to navigate London) showing growth in their Hippocampus, the area of the brain associated with navigation and spatial learning. The fact that the ‘visual area’ of blind people is adapted to process auditory information is another great example. Brains are endlessly fascinating, and the most complex thing that we know of in existence. We’re only just beginning to scratch the surface of what they can do.

    • Photo: Claire Melia

      Claire Melia answered on 13 Jun 2018:

      The human brain completely befuddles me, it’s just so complicated! I can’t think too much about the intricacies of the brain without having a bit of an existential crisis, but i’ll try my best…

      I think the thing I find most interesting is the way it’s organised and compartmentalised. Considering that all the different sections of the brain are connected, you might think that it’s all connected as one and if one part fails, then so will the rest. Not the case! Take Phineas Gage for example. He had a very unfortunate accident which ended up with an iron bar straight through his head (ouch!). He then started to act very differently and it was clear that his personality and behaviour had been affected, because the areas in the brain responsible for these traits had been impacted by the iron bar. Yet the rest of his brain was fine! This means that certain parts of the brain have very specific responsiblities and although these all work together, if one area is affected then the rest of the brain isn’t. It’s just such a cool organisation of the brain!

      That’s about as much thinking about the inside of my own head I can handle, I can already feel myself starting to get weirded out by how impressive our own brains are.

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