The document discusses the human brain, including that it weighs about 3 pounds, contains around 30 billion neurons that connect via synapses in complex 3D patterns, and that our understanding of how the brain works is still limited. It notes that the brain is highly complex, develops through neural Darwinism and experience, and allows for perception, inference, creativity, and language through patterns and predictions rather than operating like a computer.

1. THE BRAIN

2. All your…

10. • 3 pounds of squidgy, whitish,
buttery gloop…. cytoplasm
• 1500ml
• 3 times bigger than any ape or
Australopithecus

12. • 30 billion neurons (fire in patterns)
Each with about 5000 dendrites;
synaptic connections in 3d space
WE DO NOT HAVE A CONVINCING
OVERARCHING THEORY FOR HOW IT
WORKS YET

13. Smart ape
Embodied

14. Mind on the hoof: 4Fs

15. Embedded
…in a specific culture

16. Umwelt: sensory world

17. Ultraviolet

18. Olfactory

19. Tactile

20. Infra red

21. Auditory – Echolocation

22. •What is it like
to be a bat?

23. subsonic sound

24. Color Vision

25. Psychedelic Umwelt of hyperspectral color and polarized light

26. Electrical fields

29. Extended phenotype

39. Language and social learning

41. 7. “My second favorite organ”

42. • 30 billion neurons (fire in patterns)
Each with about 5000 dendrites
synaptic connections in 3d space
WE DO NOT HAVE A CONVINCING
OVERARCHING THEORY FOR HOW IT
WORKS YET

44. Synapse

45. Interesting bits

47. Sensory

49. Dinner napkin cerebral cortex

50. Cerebral cortex

51. ?

52. ?

53. Neuroscience—a golden age
• Like ocean unchartered territory

54. Baby brain
Twice the number of neurons!
Very few connections

55. Ship coming out of the fog
• Newborn
• 4 weeks
• 8 weeks
• 3 months
• 6 months

56. 10. Neural Darwinism

58. Selection
1. More connections produced than needed
2. Competing for limited nutients and O2
3. Neurons that fire together wire together
4. Use or lose… brain constructs itself by the
logic of evolution and embryology; not
analogous to a manufactured computer
• 600 phonemes at birth
• 45 per language

59. Active Perception
• Fuzzy input-degeneracy

60. Mind on the hoof: 4Fs

61. INFERENCE MACHINE
• What if?
• Living in the subjunctive tense?
• Scientific method: wet-wired?
• Curiosity/Creativity?
• Making it up as we go along (on the fly)?
• Who do we think we are?

64. Adolescent brain

67. TAKE HOMES
• 1. Embodied and embedded
• 2. Construct self (brain) based on experience
Neural Darwinism
• 3. Neuroscience in infancy (excited about new
discoveries)
• 4. The brain is not a computer WHY?
• 5. Spotting patterns/makes predictions/fuzzy
metaphor and language precedes logic

68. ONLY ONCE IN THE WORLD…
• We are only once in the world, thrown into a
situation that we have not chosen. Randomly
tossed into a specific period and place. We do
choose our particular geographic, historic,
linguistic, cultural or socio-economic
backdrop. We are left in the lurch, so to
speak, only to do our utmost, with the hand
dealt, during a finite span between the
contingency of birth, and the certainty of
death.

70. It will be short. The
Interim is mine;
And a man’s life no more than to say ‘one.’
Shakespeare: Hamlet. (V.2. 73-75)