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 Week 7 | Neuroscience + Art | Blog Assignment

James Hepp

5/13/22

The brain and neuroscience research is fairly new in our society. It was hard to study this part of the body with the lack of technology. Over time, neuroscientists have been able to make some amazing discoveries about the human brain while learning the overall function. Our interpretation of the function of the brain has not always been the same and has drastically developed over the course of our history.


https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-makes-a-human-brain-unique/

One thing that stood out to me was how the understanding of the brain has changed over time. Aristotle believed that the brain was the cooling system of the body. He thought the brain cooled the blood and prevented the body from overheating. I thought this was pretty interesting because of our understanding of the brain in modern society. Considering now that we know that the brain controls the whole body. It wasn't until electricity and the invention of the microscope that we figured out this discovery. 


https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/brainpages/brain.html

Another way that we have been able to do research on the human brain in by looking at an object that has an extremely similar structure; sea sponges. Humans share 70% of their genes with sea sponges. Sea sponges have signature proteins and synapses that react in a similar way to those of humans.  This allows neuroscientists to understand the human brain better and study neurological disorders. This is a great example of technology advancing over time. With modern technology, we were able to figure out the similarities between those two things in order to create better research of the human brain. 

 https://www.earth.com/news/new-species-of-sea-sponge-discovered-in-british-columbia/



Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Consciousness". Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 Oct. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/consciousness. Accessed 12 May 2022.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Franz Joseph Gall". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 Mar. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Franz-Joseph-Gall. Accessed 11 May 2022.

Caston, Victor. "Aristotle on consciousness." Mind 111.444 (2002): 751-815.

Dunn, Greg. “‘Brainbow Hippocampus.’” "Brainbow Hippocampus" | Medium, Medium, 4 Oct. 2016, https://medium.com/brain-byte-blog/brainbow-hippocampus-c8996ff8063f. 

Weissman, Tamily A, and Y Albert Pan. “Brainbow: new resources and emerging biological applications for multicolor genetic labeling and analysis.” Genetics vol. 199,2 (2015): 293-306. doi:10.1534/genetics.114.172510




Comments

  1. Jared KarrosMay 15, 2022 at 6:09 PM

    Hi James. I really enjoyed viewing your post and thought the information you presented was very interesting. Specifically, I really liked your discussion about the sea sponges. I had no idea the resemblance we have with them in terms of our genetic makeup. It is fascinating that we are able to study them and learn about the brain at the same time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Claire KronenMay 15, 2022 at 8:54 PM

    Hi James,
    I really enjoyed reading your blog. You wrote about some really interesting topics that also stood out to me in the lectures. I find it extremely interesting that we used to believe that the brain was the cooling system of the body, and that we did all our thinking from the heart. With all of the knowledge that we have now, it's hard for me to believe that we used to not know much about the body at all. Great job!

    ReplyDelete

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