Structure and Function of the Human Brain

This research examines the structure and function of the human brain. The plan of the research will be to set forth varieties of research and opinion regarding how the brain works and then to discuss the hypothesis that the brain is a digital computer, with a view toward demonstrating that such a hypothesis cannot be sustained.

Beginning in the 1980s, electronics and computer-imaging technicians succeeded in developing technology that could produce a 3-D digitized image of the surface of the human brain. It had long been known that brain function entails organization of neurons and metabolism, which entails measurable electrochemical action (Hibbard & Others, 1987). For example, specific neurotransmitter receptor sites for dopamine were identified with the help of radiography (Altar & Others, 1985). Because radiography was implicated in cerebral behavior, it was inevitable that digital technology advances would be applied to the challenge of enhancing images. The principal projected usages of such technology were, of course, of a medical nature. The formation in 1993 of the Human Brain Project (HBP), which is ongoing, had as its principal objective the creation of a computer-generated brain map, or digital atlas:

For the atlas, functional and anatomical brain data from thousands of single subjects is being analyzed for similarities and variations, and the resulting statistical information is being used to create a probabilistic representation that extends to numerous subpop

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chanisms by which material functioning of the brain occurs. For one thing, the brains observed in the study were simian, not human, which is the case with much brain research. Even so, stimulation and exercise were necessary for the synchronization of neural functioning to be observed and the inference of cognition to be made. The most definite conclusion reached was that synchronous neurotransmitter activity could be associated with cognition, where cognition = observable changes in the focus of attention. But that does not prove that cognition is identical to neurotransmitter coordination, hence that the brain is a digital computer, only that the two phenomena operate simultaneously. Still less does neural coordination reveal the content of cognitive behavior. This has not prevented neuroscience theory from collapsing study of the brain into study of cognition. Citing the work of sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, Wolfe (1996, p. 210-11) repeats the crux of his theory: Every human brain, he says, is born not as a blank tablet (a tabula rasa) waiting to be filled in by experience but as "an exposed negative waiting to be slipped into developer fluid." You can develop the negative well or you can develop it poorly, but either way

Category: Medical - S