Brain is such a complex part of our body that you may need a detailed book to understand that. That is what I have attempted to do in my book “How does the Mind work?”. But still, what I have presented in that book is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
We are far from understanding our brain completely. My guess is that we will never be able to understand it fully, since we don’t have its designer’s manual! You can’t cut open a computer to understand how it works! Can you? To understand a computer, you need to first study the basic design philosophy of a digital computer. In computer lingo, you need to first understand Boolean algebra, finite state automata, Turing machine, and so on.
But lot of progress has been made during the past century or so. New gadgets like MRI scanners and computer aided simulators have speeded up our quest to understand this most marvelous and complex entity. Now the scientists are able to ‘simulate’ parts of human brain using a computer, and study it under different conditions.
These neurons are interconnected among themselves by what are called dendrites and axons. They are like wires that connect two transistors in a computer. But unlike the computer, these interconnections can change over a period of time. Not only that, new connecting wires can get formed when needed.
These neurons work together, to enable us to remember things, see, hear, smell, taste, touch as well. They are the ones that are responsible for all our acts both ‘intellectual’ as well as mechanical. While you are reading/listening to whatever I am saying now, millions of neurons are busily coordinating among themselves to help you in reading, understanding, remembering, pondering and so on. Without your knowledge they silently work in an orchestrated manner to make your ‘mind’ work!
In common parlance, these neurons are called ‘the grey matter’ in our brain and the wires that connect them are called ‘the white matter’. That is why we slight a dim-witted person as the one lacking grey matter. But just the grey matter can’t do much. We need white matter as well.
A very interesting aspect of these neurons are that they communicate among themselves through electrical signals. Connected neurons can trigger one another by sending signals via the interconnections. They can even dampen one another by sending negative signals!
Further interesting aspect of these connections is that their strengths can increase or decrease over a period of time. A connection with higher strength can be more effective in either stimulating or dampening another neuron to which it is connected through that connection.
How do these neurons get produced?
Most of them are produced even before we are born. So, we come to this world with a brain full of neurons! Till recently it was believed that no new neurons are produced after we are born. But now the scientists have found that under some conditions new neurons can get produced at any stage of our life, though most of the ‘original’ neurons are the ones that run the show.
As we age, many of them gradually die, and in extreme cases, premature dying can lead to debilitating diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Some of the neurons are preconnected before we are born and they perform the functions such as seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touch sensing, speaking, understanding spoken speech and so on.
If you think that it is your eye that sees, you are wrong. Eyes just capture the images and forward them to the brain. And a battery of neurons, dedicated for that function, process those images and give us our sense of vision. So, it is our brain or rather our mind that actually sees! So, also all our sense functions.
But most neurons are not allotted to any of these functions. They are still connected through ‘weak’ connections. The strengths of these connections increase over a period of time to enable us to remember things, perform actions, and most importantly to make us think.
If you were to believe these scientists, whatever we do, ultimately points to some set of neurons working somewhere. And we think that ‘we think’!
That brings us to the question namely, how do we think? That is what I am going to discuss in the next episode.
A series revolving around Mind – Science of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Notions of reality, Mind modulation, Domains beyond Mind, and so on. © Dr. King 2019
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