1. How our brain works and does not work
David Spafford
Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate
Neuroscience
Department of Biology,
University of Waterloo

2. ORGANIZATION OF THE TALK
1. The brain is complex
2. The brain is highly sensitive to injury
3. The brain interprets the sensory information it receives
4. The brain lives in its own virtual reality
5. Our divided brain
6. Critical brain feature for human culture – Mirror neurons.

3. human brain
100 billion neurons
100 trillion
synaptic connections
dendrite
dendritic
spine
pre-synaptic
neuron
synapse
post-synaptic
neuron
nerve
terminals
Purkinje
Neuron

4. nerve
peripheral nervous (wrapped by
system nerve epineurium)
nerve fascicle
(wrapped by
perineurium)
neuron neuron
(wrapped in (wrapped in
endoneurium) myelin sheath) neuron

5. The Brain Stem – The Primitive Brain
- produces automatic, survival behaviors
• midbrain
• pons
• medulla

6. Cerebellum – body movement center
– coordinates body movements
– helps maintain equilibrium
Cerebellar cortex

7. MORE ADVANCED BRAIN
Diencephalon on top of the Brain stem
hypothalamus “master control gland of autonomic activities”
epithalamus “pineal gland” – circadian rhythms
thalamus “relay center of sensory information”
Basal ganglia (Basal nuclei)
internal islands of gray matter (help regulate voluntary motor activities)
(basal ganglia)
(basal ganglia)
thalamus
(basal ganglia)

8. PROJECTION FIBERS
AND CORPUS COLLOSUM
corpus callosum
Projection fibers”

9. CEREBRAL CORTEX
• 2-4 mm thick gray matter
• accounts for 40% of the mass of the brain; cortical folds triples size of cortex
• “home of our conscious mind” and information processing of the brain
• enables sensation, voluntary and skilled skeletal muscle activity, language,
memory, personality, self-awareness
• Each hemisphere has functional regions
white matter
gray matter

10. A • Primary olfactory cortex K
L J
B M
• Orbitofrontal cortex
N
C • Prefrontal cortex
D • Motor association area
B
E • Primary motor area
F • Primary somatosensory area
G • Somatosensory association area F E
H • Visual association area G D
I • Primary visual cortex
H
J • Wernicke’s area C
K • Primary gustatory cortex
L • Primary auditory cortex
M • Auditory association area I
N • Broca’s area A

11. 1. The brain is complex
2. The brain is highly sensitive to injury
3. The brain interprets the sensory information it receives
4. The brain lives in its own virtual reality
5. Our divided brain
6. Critical brain feature for human culture – Mirror neurons.

12. B
A
A B
A
B
B
B B C
B
A
B
B
A A
A Internal carotid artery
C Circle of Willis
B Cerebral arteries (anterior, middle)

13. Stroke
• Caused when blood circulation to the brain is
blocked and brain tissue dies
• Most commonly caused by blockage of a
cerebral artery
• Other causes include compression of the brain
by hemorrhage or edema, and atherosclerosis

14. Cerebral aneurism
 is a weak or thin spot on a blood vessel in the brain that balloons
out and fills with blood.
 may leak or rupture, hemorrhaging into the surrounding tissue

15. Concussions or traumatic brain injury
Muhammad Ali
Sidney Crosby Punch drunk syndrome
concussion

16. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)

17. Brain surrounded by bone (skull)

18. 1. The brain is complex
2. The brain is highly sensitive to injury
3. The brain interprets the sensory information it receives
4. The brain lives in its own virtual reality
5. Our divided brain
6. Critical brain feature for human culture – Mirror neurons.

19. Sensory Integration:
Our brains can fill in the gaps…

20. Multimodal Sensory Integration
(vision-hearing-touch-taste-smell)
The brain makes use of multiple sensory inputs
simultaneously to provide the “best” understanding possible.
McGurk Effect
image of a man uttering “ga ga”
audio of him pronouncing “ba ba”
our brains mesh these two to come up with “da da”.

21. Amygdala – the emotional center
fear, anger, pleasure

22. Capgras syndrome
The brain injured
patient's mother came to
see him, he exclaimed,
"Who is this woman? She
looks just like my mother,
but she's an impostor!
She's some other woman
pretending to be my
mother.

23. Synaesthesia – “Jointed perception”
Daniel Tammet
Tammet set a record on March
14th 2004 when he recited the
famous mathematical constant Pi
(3.141...) to 22,514 decimal
places from memory in a time of
5 hours, 9 minutes.

24. Everyone has a limited form synaesthesia
- important for metaphorical thinking , abstraction, creativity
- 8x more likely for poets, artist, and novelists to have synaesthesia
Alien language:
“Booba” and “Kikki”

25. 1. The brain is complex
2. The brain is highly sensitive to injury
3. The brain interprets the sensory information it receives
4. The brain lives in its own virtual reality
5. Our divided brain
6. Critical brain feature for human culture – Mirror neurons.

26. George: Jerry, just remember, it's not a lie if
you believe it.

27. Phantom limb pain

28. Sensory and Motor Areas of the Cerebral Cortex
• Spatial map of somatic sensory area / primary motor area

29. Vilayanur Ramachandran

31. The Divided Brain

32. Brain halves are asymmetrical

33. Brain halves talk with one another through the corpus callosum

34. Original interpretation of the divided brain

35. Left side of brain can’t interpret the whole
man, bicycle and house drawn by subject
with right pareito-occipital lesion)
Left to write: normal conditions, right hemisphere
inactivated, left hemisphere inactivated

36. Hemi-neglect - inability to pay attention to or
notice stimuli from one-half of the visual field

37. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor
Harvard-trained and published neuroanatomist
Morning in 1996 Jill Taylor: “I realized, ‘Oh my gosh! I’m having a
stroke! I’m having a stroke!’ The next thing my brain says to me is,
‘Wow! This is so cool! How many brain scientists have the
opportunity to study their own brain from the inside out?’”
In her case, although the stroke damaged the left side of her brain,
her recovery unleashed a torrent of creative energy from her right

38. RIGHT BRAIN LEFT BRAIN

39. Left brain - needed to manipulate things in the world
Right brain – provides the broader context

40. Right brain – provides broad perspective

41. Left brain – execution of tasks

42. Left brain – execution of tasks

43. 1. The brain is complex
2. The brain is highly sensitive to injury
3. The brain integrates and interprets the sensory
information it receives
4. The brain lives in its own virtual reality
5. Our divided brain
6. Critical brain feature for human culture – Mirror neurons

44. IMITATION, EMULATION,
LANGUAGE, MOTOR PLANNING
ORIGINS OF HUMAN EMPATHY
HUMAN CIVILIZATION AND
CULTURE
= MIRROR NEURONS
- mirror neurons for action
- mirror neurons for touch

45. Discovery of Mirror Neurons in Monkeys
Brain recording of
mirror neurons in
prefrontal cortex
Monkey grabs food pellet
Giacomo Rizzolatti,
Italy, early 1990s
Monkey watches human grab food pellet

47. Mirror Neurons for action
= experience another other persons point of view, virtual
simulation of action
Imitation / emulation – learn language, learning to hold a
pencil, feeling their pain,
- discovery of culture moves rapidly through the population
- discover of culture carried through the generations

48. Mirror Neurons for touch
- Somatosensory neuron will fire when I simply watch another
person being touched (empathy)
- feedback from receptors in skin prevent you from feeling
someone else's experience of touch
- Remove skin receptor connection to the brain, you then
remove the barrier between what that person feels and what
you feel
Mirror neurons connects people as a whole creating human
empathy and the development of human culture