Brain weighs about 1.5 kgs with about 100, billion nerve cells. The nerve cells somehow create the human mind. The question is how?
This documentary is about understanding of the physical working of the brain. The neurologist being interviewed after a brain surgery mentions that thought is a physical phenomenon, and brain is its living proof. Unlike the conventionally-fed thought (from culture, elders, faith) that thought is something different and arises from mind (not the brain). Brain is doing much more than one is aware of. Ours arms and other limbs are continuously feeding information to the brain, which creates a sensation of what ones body is doing. The brain attributes sensations to the part of a limb that is being contacted (stimulated).
The phantom limb:
The patients with this medical issue feel that even though their limb is amputated (due to any reasons) that part continues to exist and may cause discomfort. It is the brain (not the base of the amputated limb) that generates the phantom limb. The brain area that contains the memory of the amputated limb are still intact and continues to give a feedback to the brain about it. It is thought that after amputation the brain undergoes remapping such that some parts of the face start generating the same nerve signals that are known to arise from the phantom limb ( hand in this case).
What about the less physical aspects of life like ones individual thinking? Is it possible to trace back every part of ones character to a specific area of our brain? This episode mentions one person who lost the perception to distinguish music genres after a brain surgery. But she has a recognition of the mood of the heard music. It begs a question, does the recognition of music have a specialized area in the brain?
Synapse is a gap between each neuron in the brain. When an electrical signal reaches the end of a neuron it releases a chemical called a neuro-transmitter. This neurotransmitter then travels across the synapse and triggers a new electrical signal in the next cell. All brain activity boils down to this. From a experimental method the author showed that every thing we do involves a set of chemicals and neural based electrical signals. For now it seems, that for doing even very trivial things the brain needs to utilize various parts of itself to perform a given task.
Degenerative brain disorders typically result from a damage in a lower-brain area called the substantia nigra. This mental paralysis is known to be over come by a chemical called dopamine. What is the basis for our own specific memories, personality, and thoughts?
As a case study of a person interviewed in this episode it was mentioned that as there is a degenerative process occurring in this person's front part of the brain, the personality seemed to change as a consequence. The frontal lobes of the brain is responsible for ones personality, temperament, social skills, and the affect of degenerative disorder on the frontal lobes of this person changed the entire personality as this person became 'careless' of the inconvenience caused to others, inability to judge the aptness of a joke to a given audience. However, as a side-effect this person gained interest in painting (that never existed earlier). Again, as the degeneration continues, this new habit of painting will also fade and another new personality will come up instead. In the current time also, one does not have the knowledge to explain such a condition of the brain.
According to a doctor in the episode, brain is a collection of a number of interactive modules, some modules inhabit/favor the function of other modules.
There is a mention of a French artist Vincent van Gogh who was admitted to a mental asylum due to his epileptic episodes. It is thought that epilepsy seemed to have an extraordinary effect on his art, ideas, and on his perception. The area that got purportedly affected due to epileptic episodes was the temporal lobes. Frequent epilepsy in this area of the brain can create different sensory perceptions and alter the personality of a person permanently. This temporal lobe area of the brain is also responsible for creating a spiritual feeling, as was the case with van Gogh. van Gogh is known to have written that he was the holy spirit, all spiritual feelings arising perhaps from the temporal lobe area. Such perceptions can be misinterpreted by the subject as faith-related episode.
Can all the faith-based experiences attributed to activities in the brain?, the narrator asks. At the present moment science is unable to answer the questions like: what is soul, what is after-life, does a super-natural power exist?
It looks like in Canada, Dr. Michael Persinger and co-researchers are doing experiments to study how faith-based experiences/feelings are generated in the brain. In these experiments, the subject is blind folded and acoustically shielded in order to reduce distractions of the environment. These experiments are based on wearing experimental gear designed to stimulate the temporal lobe region of the brain. One of such experiment is mentioned here, the subject experiences the presence of fire at a distance, followed by traveling through a tunnel, seeing a face, seeing some sort of bright light, things moving fast. The experiences are not only visual but also of a sensed-presence, which is the perception of someone being present near the subject.
The researchers claims that they have recreated some of the basic features that are common to many faith-based belief systems. It is said that if the same subjects were not to be in a lab-set up but instead, if they were to experience similar thoughts at their homes in early morning; such feelings can easily be attributed to the super-natural force as ascribed in faith-based systems.
Dr. Persinger says that experiences arise from the brain and some of them can be duplicated by external stimuli to the brain. Such experiences can be gathered by any one. Such experiments are perhaps the early probes to understand the mystical experiences which until now had been beyond the reach of science.
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