The Strange Workings of the Brain

1. The Strange Workings of the Brain

2. Outline • Phobias • Phantom Limbs • Prosopagnosia and the Capgras Delusion • Synesthesia • Memory • Consciousness

3. Phobias http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta-FGE7QELQ

4. Phantom Limbs • Sensation that missing limb is still present • Often painful • Can sometimes be controlled, sometimes act on their own accord • Not necessarily the same as missing limb • Missing arm felt “6 inches too short” • Related to mapping of body onto brain • Mirror treatment

5. Cortical Homonculus

6. Phantom Limbs • Sensation that missing limb is still present • Often painful • Can sometimes be controlled, sometimes act on their own accord • Not necessarily the same as missing limb • Missing arm felt “6 inches too short” • Related to mapping of body onto brain • Mirror treatment provides visual feedback

7. Mirror Box Treatment

8. Prosopagnosia and the Capgras Delusion • Prosopagnosia: inability to recognize faces • Can follow from traumatic brain injury • Usually associated with damage to fusiform gyrus (part of temporal lobe) • Different forms: • Apperceptive: severe, can’t even tell gender of person, ‘faces make no sense’ • Associative: can’t make links between face and person • Subject may have emotional response without conscious recognition

9. Prosopagnosia and the Capgras Delusion • Capgras Delusion: person holds a delusion that a friend, spouse, parent, etc. has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor • Thought to be like reverse of Prosopagnosia • Conscious ability to recognize faces, but without automatic emotional response • Can be caused by traumatic brain injury • Possibly due to disconnection between temporal cortex (facial recognition) and limbic system (emotions)

10. Neurological condition in which stimulation in one cognitive pathway causes stimulation in another • Examples: • Symbol --> color or spatial location • Sound --> color • Symbol --> personality

12. “T’s are generally crabbed, ungenerous creatures. U is a soulless sort of thing. 4 is honest, but… 3 I cannot trust… 9 is dark, a gentleman, tall and graceful, but politic under his suavity” • Can test for synesthia • 1 in 23 people have mild synesthesia • Likely due to cross activation of different brain regions

13. Testing for Synesthesia

14. “T’s are generally crabbed, ungenerous creatures. U is a soulless sort of thing. 4 is honest, but… 3 I cannot trust… 9 is dark, a gentleman, tall and graceful, but politic under his suavity” • Can test for synesthia • 1 in 23 people have mild synesthesia • Likely due to cross activation of different brain regions

16. Synesthesia can be beneficial to those effected • Can aid memory – we’ll see this in a bit • Many artists have synesthesia • Synesthetes are truly gods among men • Famous Synesthetes include: John Mayer, Pharell and Eddie Van Halen!!! • Some think that synesthesia can be related to the development of language • Kiki or Booba?

18. Memory • Impressive capacities for memory: • Solomon Shereshevsky • Russian dude active in the early 20th c. • Could reproduce incredibly long lists of sounds, words, formulas, etc. without error after indefinite amounts of time • Diagnosed with 5-fold synesthesia • Music  color, touch  taste, etc. • Would memorize things by placing them in imaginary landscape • Might forget something if he couldn’t find it in this landscape

19. Memory • Impressive capacities for memory: • Shass Pollak: Jewish mnemonists who memorized more than 5,000 pages of 12 books of Babylonian Talmud • A pin would be placed on a word, let us say, the fourth word in line eight; the memory sharp would then be asked what word is in the same spot on page thirty-eight or fifty or any other page; the pin would be pressed through the volume until it reached page thirty eight or page fifty or any other page designated; the memory sharp would then mention the word and it was found invariably correct.

20. Memory Disorders • Henry Gustav Molaison (H.M.) • Anterograde amnesia: can’t form new memories • Bad epilepsy  brain surgery, removed parts of medial temporal lobes • Lost ability to form new long term memories • Could still learn new motor memories, but wouldn’t remember having learned them • K.C. • Intact semantic memory, no episodic memory • “unable to describe an event that took place in school that specifically included him; however, he knows that he went to school, and he retains the knowledge that he gained there“ • Clive Wearing • Memento syndrome as result of Herpes simplex • ‘Waking up’ every 20 seconds • 8:31 AM: Now I am really, completely awake.9:06 AM: Now I am perfectly, overwhelmingly awake.9:34 AM: Now I am superlatively, actually awake.

21. Consciousness • Physical theory for consciousness • Some argue that consciousness must be a quantum phenomenon • Orchestrated Object Reduction (Orch-OR) • Formulated by Roger Penrose and an anesthesiologist • Godel’s theorem  brain can go beyond axioms/algorithms • Theorem relates to un-provable-ness of theorms

22. Consciousness • More Penrose • For non-algorithmic physics, look to quantum theory • Collapse of wave function is probabilistic • “states are proposed to be selected by a 'non-computable' influence embedded in the fundamental level of spacetime geometry at the Planck scale.” • Plato: pure values and forms exist in abstract realm • Penrose: this realm is the Planck scale • Suggests that brain contains these isolated quantum systems – possibly in microtubules inside neurons

23. THE END