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The Strange Workings of the Brain
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Outline Phobias Phantom Limbs Prosopagnosia and the Capgras Delusion Synesthesia Memory Consciousness
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta-FGE7QELQ Phobias
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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
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Cortical Homonculus
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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
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Mirror Box Treatment
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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
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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 has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor Thought to be like reverse of Prosopagnosia – Conscious ability to recognize faces, but without automatic emotional response Can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)
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Neurological condition in which stimulation in one cognitive pathway causes stimulation in another Examples: Symbol --> color or spatial location Sound --> color Symbol --> personality
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“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
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Testing for Synesthesia
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“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
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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?
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Memory Impressive capacities for memory: – Solomon Shereshevsky Russian dude active in the early 20 th 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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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THE END
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