SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Even though you use your brain to do a lot of thinking, you probably don't think about your brain that often.
It's an incredibly complex, incredibly precious organ. It's also incredibly squishy, as you can see in an amazing teaching video that demonstrates a freshly removed brain straight from autopsy.
As the neuroanatomist handles the vulnerable blob with the utmost care, it's awe-inspiring to realise that each one of us has a squishy brain just like it - and it contains all our memories and thoughts.
[...] And that's actually one of the purposes of the video - apart from being a teaching material, the university wanted "to stress the vulnerability of the brain to highlight the importance of wearing helmets, seat belts, and taking care of this very precious tissue."
https://www.sciencealert.com/what-human-brain-really-looks-like-video-incredible
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @03:05AM (10 children)
Thats like saying your computer contains the internet, and its specifically localized to the network card since removing/damaging it prevents access.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @03:40AM (1 child)
Perhaps.
My interpretation is that it does, in fact, contain all the memories, personality, skills, etc of a person. That does not rule out some conscious observer who inhabits the experience of that person yet is independent of it and not destroyed when the brain disappears. However, when inhabiting an experience as a person from birth to death, the observer is generally unable to recall observations of other people it's already observed.
How could we design an experiment to distinguish your monad from my monad? Well, I suppose we should begin by designing an experiment to prove the existence of monads. At least something like that seems like a compelling possibility when faced with the inability to imagine that one's existence is as constrained in time as it is in space. If constrained in space, why shouldn't it be constrained in time? Perhaps only because the time dimension is the only one we experience linearly and at a constant rate?
At the very least, I find Occam's razor unsatisfying in this case. I gather that I am not remotely close to being alone in that.
(I assume that's what you were talking about...?)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @04:00AM
Not the AC but humans have another big bunch of neurons elsewhere:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/ [scientificamerican.com]
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/healthy_aging/healthy_body/the-brain-gut-connection [hopkinsmedicine.org]
So it's unlikely that the brain contains all our memories. Even from a different perspective from the original AC.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pvanhoof on Monday June 11 2018, @09:04AM (6 children)
And it might not be true. We have in our intestins a autonomous nervous system. "The ENS is also called the second brain."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @11:06AM (5 children)
Yea, I'd say with 100% certainty that the claim "*all* memories are stored in the brain" is wrong. Unless you want to start doing stuff like using a circular definition of memory.
(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Monday June 11 2018, @12:34PM (4 children)
It's for example possible that when you ate something wrong, and you felt terrible because of it, that in future your body reminds you of the past experience not merely using the memory of the brain in your skull but also using its enteric nervous system.
Implying, basically, that 'my stomach is trying to tell me something' should probably say 'my enteric nervous system' is trying to tell me something. That would probably be exact or correct indeed. So your intestins are talking to your brain, basically.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @04:02PM (3 children)
There are some studies that indicate that microbes can influence your gut to influence your brain: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-gut-bacteria-tell-their-hosts-what-to-eat/ [scientificamerican.com]
There are also some correlations between gut microbes and behavior but the cause-effect direction is unclear:
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/gut-microbes-strongly-influence-emotional-behaviors/ [iflscience.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snow on Monday June 11 2018, @04:13PM (1 child)
That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works.
(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Monday June 11 2018, @06:20PM
I for one welcome our gut overlords.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @06:49PM
I was just about to say this, but yeah, I have heard about fecal transplants changing the behavior of people (primarily the food they crave), and it is hypothesized that the gut bacteria is telling your brain what to eat. So if you wipe out your micro-biome and replace it with a new one, your gut will tell you to eat differently.
So, perhaps people aren't totally wrong when they say they have a "gut reaction."
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Wednesday June 13 2018, @01:08AM
What, and memories exist independent of your nervous system like Plato's Forms? Do you really believe the human memory to be that objective? People create memories all the time.