15. Your gender and your orientation.
Your mental maps, cognitive short cuts
(including stereotypes).
Your opinions, beliefs, knowledge, deep
understanding, and wisdom.
Your capability and fallibility.
Your questioning?
16. âŚand all that lies deep and inaccessible
within your subconscious?
17. In other wordsâall the
complexity, potential, and
astonishing mystery that is YouâŚ
18. âŚis contained in...
⢠3 pounds of squidgy, pinkish,
buttery gloopâŚ
⢠1500ml
⢠3 times bigger than any ape or
Australopithecus
20. Take a momentâŚ
Feel around your head
with both hands⌠Imagine
your own large brain
beneath your hair, under
your skin, protected by a
cranium made of strong
bone, cushioned and
sealed with a brain-blood-
barrier.
21. Your brain has a very generous blood
supply. It consumes 20% of all the oxygen
used by your body.
Metabolically speakingââit is
a very expensive organ.â
25. Your are ready for actionâŚ
Most of your brain activity is about
interacting with your environment
and fine tuning control of your
complex bodyâessentially what
neuroscientists call âthe four Fsâ
Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing andâŚ
Reproducing
26. You are a ânaked apeâ âŚ
âŚwith 98.8% of your genes
in common with chimpanzees
28. Fortunately you are not part of a baboon
troopâspending 8 hours sleeping, 3 hours
eating, and the rest of the day being socially
awful to each other, maintaining dominance
hierarchies and causing hormonal stress
s
30. The genetic uniqueness of the single sperm, from the
100 million or so in the ejaculation that fathered
you, is a feature of meiosis with its 223 possibilities
of âindependent assortment,â further enriched
by âcrossover recombinants.â
31. You were thrown into a time and
place, and into a body not of your
own choosingâŚ
54. Each with up to 5000 branched
dendrites allowing thousands of
synaptic connections in 3d space
We do not have a convincing
overarching theory for how the
brain works in all its astonishing
complexity⌠yet!
59. Neurotransmitters excite,
inhibit or modulate
Simple neurotransmitters like
glutamate, GABA, acetylcholine,
glycine and norepinephrine do most
of the work in the brain.
More 100 have been identified so far.
63. Imaging techniques like diffusion
tensor, PET scan, and non-invasive
MRI have created a âgolden ageâ for
exploring the unchartered territory of
neuroscience
70. We are born helpless and premature; and need an
extended period of parental care. Most other placental
mammals are ready to go after the first few minutes of
being in the worldâŚ
The human brain is
very large compared to
other mammals and we
have so much to learn.
71. Human baby brain is only 20%
of adult size, but it has the same
number of neurons!
72. Synaptic density peaks at age 2
There is a rapid proliferation
and overproduction of synapses
during infancy. Two-year-olds
have an astonishing 50% more
connections than in adults!
75. Synaptic pruning by microglial
cells eventually brings the overall
number of connections down to
adult levels.
This process is most exuberant
during the first few years of life,
and extends well into adolescence
and young adulthood.
77. Neural Selection
1. More connections produced than needed
2. Competing for limited nutrients and O2
3. Neurons that fire together âwet wireâ together
in response to lived experience
4. Use or lose⌠brain constructs itself by the
logic of evolution and embryology; not
analogous to a manufactured computer
81. 1. We are physically embodied and
socially and culturally embedded with
others in stories (âusefulâ fictions
collectively imagined)
2. Technology extends our embodiment
and what we can know
3. Human brains are the most
complicated structures in the known
universe (so far).
82. 4. Neuroscience is still in its
infancy. We still lack a coherent,
overarching explanation for how
the brain works
5. Understanding consciousness
and free will remain contentious
and somewhat mysterious
