The Secret Lives of The Brain

In the article titled, “Secrets of the Brain” published in the February 2014 issue of National Geographic, we learn that there have been many advances in understanding the inner workings of our brains. One of the leading scentists, Van Weeden, is working hard to understand the connections that occur within our heads.

The book goes into details of how the brain evolved. Pinker explains what the human mind is, describing the emotions that linked to the brain. Telling this, he asserts the fact that human brain is not a brain. According to him, there are reasons why humans act rationally and irrationally. Pinker develops a relationship between the

I read the article, “Secrets of the Brain”, found in the February 2014 issue of National Geographic written by Carl Zimmer. I chose this subject because I have been fascinated with the brain and how it works. The research of the brain has been ongoing for many centuries now. The history in this article is interesting. It explained how scientists used to understand the brain and its inner workings. For example, “in the ancient world physicians believed that the brain was made of phlegm. Aristotle looked on it as a refrigerator, cooling of the fiery heart. From his time through the Renaissance, anatomists declared with great authority that our perceptions, emotions, reasoning, and actions were all the result of “animal spirits”—mysterious, unknowable vapors that swirled through cavities in our head and traveled through our bodies.” (Zimmer, p. 38)

In David Eagleman’s article “The Brain on Trail,” Eagleman (2011), a neuroscientist, writes about the massive developments that scientists have discovered about the brain and how our current justice system contradicts these findings. Eagleman’s main claim is that human behavior and human biology will always coincide with one another, which is why there should be personalized prison sentences, upgrades on rehabilitation programs, and introduce long-term catalysts for better performance.

Incognito is a very interesting and thought provoking book written by neuroscientist David Eagleman. Incognito is a wide range look at the development of our thinking and the current state of brain science. In the book

In the book, “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain,” David Eagleman challenges many ideas that we might have about our identities, mindset, perception and how they all come together to affect our actions and beliefs. Eagleman talks about how our brains work with our bodies to perceive our everyday life and tasks. He explains that the brain is a three- pound organ that takes control of our daily actions and alters our way of thinking and performing certain tasks. He states that it is easier for our brains to perform tasks like ride a bike or drive a car without thinking too much about it. In his book, he also talks about how the brain does not perform or think the same way someone else's brain might. The brain can automatically do a certain task without you even realizing it and is even able to make up a response when you don't remember exact details of a past event. This book has challenged many ideas that we may already have, or known about ourselves, and raises many questions about how our brain works to perceive and analyze information.

The PBS special "The Secret Life of the Brain" took us through all different aspects of the brain and its formation through life. These five movies taught us that the brain is plastic and is always changing, cutting unused neurons and filling with different ideas and thoughts that you learn from your environment. The five videos go through the five stages of life; baby, child, teenager, adult and finally the aging brain.

There are many facts that are unknown about the mind. For centuries, philosophers and scientists have tried to understand how it works. We have learned that the mind has a number of different levels of processing. Before Sigmund Freud “nearly all the previous research and theorizing of psychologists had dealt with conscious, such as perception, memory, judgment, and learning“ (Hunt185). Freud brought forth a number of theories that dealt with “the unconscious and its crucial role in human behavior”(Hunt 185). The unconscious is a storage area for information that is not being used. It is also the home of “powerful primitive drives and forbidden wishes that constantly generated pressure on the conscious mind”(Hunt

Psychologists constantly offer new testable hypothesis to expand our knowledge on human behavior. This paper will include an analysis of a podcast and a research article. From this analysis, a hypothesis on birth order will be offered toward the end of this paper.

There is always a process or stages in which things works or grow. They starts from the beginning and gradually work itself through the correct transformation or process.

And though a large part of the ego is unconscious, it nevertheless includes what we think of as the conscious mind.

I read the article called “Secrets of the Brain” by Carl Zimmer from the February 2014 issue of National Geographic. Zimmer told of a story of a 43 year old woman named Cathy Hutchinson suffered a massive stroke which caused her to lose movement ability, becoming completely paralyzed, and lost her ability to speak. Her doctors didn’t know if she was brain-dead or still mentally there, until one day Hutchinson’s sister asked Hutchinson if she could hear and understand her and Hutchinson looked up with her eyes to answer yes and to let her sister know that she was still there and could understand her.

If you look into the ideas of what a brain is throughout history, you will find some bizarre explanations of the almond shaped mass that lies inside of our skull. For example, “Aristotle looked on it as a refrigerator, cooling off the fiery heart.”1 Just a few hundred years ago, mankind had no idea of the importance of the human brain. Then in the 17th century the brain was beginning peak the interest of many scientists.

The brain is arranged and organised in layers with diverse levels of functioning. That our brain continues to grow across our life duration (O'Donnell et al, 2013, pp 97-100). Based on the findings of the statement that 1O percent of our brain it can be argued it is one big myth. Article in Scientific American Mind wrote that No matter what you’re doing, your brain is always active. Brain scans show that the activity of brain varies to each individual where more are active than others. However, no section of the healthy brain is solely turned off. ("You use only 10% of your brain", 2012).

The video starts off talking about the deepness of emotions we experience while listening to music. Our emotions range from happiness to sad to anger depending on the song’s lyrics, beat, tone and the purpose we are listening. Are we listening to this particular song because we are feeling sad or listening to a song because we are filled rage? Regardless our intention I learned that music interacts with our brain. Lovington mentions that there is an interaction between music and our brain which is he put decided to put music under the microscope to see exactly what happens to our brains/bodies will listening to music and making it. The video mentions we begin hearing sounds when we were fetuses at just 17-19 weeks. Fetuses hearing sounds for the first time in the womb can be seeing on ultrasounds smiling and moving along to the sounds which are extremely fascinating.