Myths about how the brain works • Hacker News Board

Re: Myths about how the brain works

#101

Post by wombatmobile » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:36 PM UTC

jbandela1 wrote: post #60

> According to this myth, the brain is like a collection of puzzle pieces, each with a dedicated mental function. One puzzle piece is for vision, another is for memory, a third is for emotions, and so on. The author makes too much about parts of the brain not being specialized. As a neurosurgery resident in a former life who actually operated on brains and took care of people with strokes and trauma, yes, different p…

Your examples of localised point effects such as speech and Parkinsonian tremor responses to probes don't negate the article's observation that brain functions are distributed, and regions participate in multiple functions.

By way of analogy, you can disable a car sooner or later by breaking the ignition switch or the gas tank lid. But those points are not alone responsible for the transportation function of the car.

The wheels of the car are involved with and vital for acceleration, steering, and braking. Without transmission and suspension, wheels do none of this.

The transmission of the car is capable of both propulsion and braking.

To think of speech as a function of a small part of the left side of the brain is incomplete. Speech requires a number of motor, sensory, respiratory and data systems to work together in a coordinated pipeline that exists across the whole brain and body. The neurons involved in those circuits also work to perform other functions.

Re: Myths about how the brain works

#102

Post by pvarangot » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

carabiner wrote: post #92

teucris wrote: post #90

The central thesis is excellent, but this really caught my eye: > Depression is usually catalogued as a mental illness, but it’s as much a metabolic illness as cardiovascular disease, which itself has significant mood-related symptoms. These two diseases occur together so often that some medical researchers believe that one may cause the other. That perspective is steeped in Cartesian dualism. Both depression and car…

I wish this to be true. I'm in excellent cardiovascular health - low BP, 60 bpm resting heart rate, extensive cardio/endurance activity 4-5 days per week. Utterly miserable every waking hour.

I struggle with depression for periods of time but have mostly always been fit. In my experience, even though it's contrary to most "broscience" out there, diet helps more with depression than working out.

What working out does definitely improve is my sex drive and self-esteem, so it's important to know what's the triggers for your depression, as it may help anyway.

Re: Myths about how the brain works

#103

Post by nescioquid » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:46 PM UTC

goatlover wrote: post #97

lukas099 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major questions of biology have already been solved, though. The rest is filling in the details.

This doesn’t seem to be true at least for the nervous and immune systems. Probably also the microbiome we host. There’s lots of important stuff yet to be learned with those systems.

I read the parent's comment in terms of how we once viewed life being mysterious, talking about the "elan vital" before we understood DNA. This is often used as an analogy to our current struggle to understand consciousness.

Re: Myths about how the brain works

#104

Post by adolph » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:57 PM UTC

hntrader wrote: post #91

adolph wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discovery of it is pretty interesting. Lithium-rich mineral springs have historically been touted for their healing properties. It was first used for mania in the late 1800s, with Denmark leading the way, but little was published about the medication for more than half a century. https://www.verywellmind.com/lithium-the-first-mood-stabiliz...

This is a good argument as to why we should look closely at traditional medicines of various cultures. We (1) coevolved with this stuff and (2) have gone through generations of trial and error. I'm a believer in modern scientific medicine, but think we often have it backwards. Before reinventing the wheel we should exhaustively test what we used traditionally. Maybe the reason we don't do much of that is that it's no…

There seems to be a good bit of different literature studying traditional cultural practices. Maybe it flies under the radar compared to flashy high-tech stuff. Below is a link to related articles about fermented beverages.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?linkname=pubmed_pubmed&from...

Re: Myths about how the brain works

#105

Post by prefrontal » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 11:06 PM UTC

Afton wrote: post #65

lycopodiopsida wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having done a neuroscience degree myself, I would double on your conclusion — I still have no clue how a brain works, apart of some simpler systems, like visual pattern recognition. I am out of the field for a single-digit number of years already, but in retrospective it is hilarious how all the literature in neuroscience is gently moving around the question of «guys, bit how all of it works»? People are happy to hac…

> fish fMRI studies Link for those curious about this comment: (Neural Correlates of Interspecies Perspective Taking in the Post-Mortem Atlantic Salmon: An Argument For Proper Multiple Comparisons Correction)[ https://teenspecies.github.io/pdfs/NeuralCorrelates.pdf ]

As the first author of that paper, I approve of this link.

Re: Myths about how the brain works

#106

Post by datameta » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 11:34 PM UTC

hntrader wrote: post #91

adolph wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discovery of it is pretty interesting. Lithium-rich mineral springs have historically been touted for their healing properties. It was first used for mania in the late 1800s, with Denmark leading the way, but little was published about the medication for more than half a century. https://www.verywellmind.com/lithium-the-first-mood-stabiliz...

This is a good argument as to why we should look closely at traditional medicines of various cultures. We (1) coevolved with this stuff and (2) have gone through generations of trial and error. I'm a believer in modern scientific medicine, but think we often have it backwards. Before reinventing the wheel we should exhaustively test what we used traditionally. Maybe the reason we don't do much of that is that it's no…

I absolutely agree with this. We should go through the many cultures' lists of traditional medicines with the lens of modern chemistry and determine what compounds lead them to be effective pharamacologically.

Re: Myths about how the brain works

#107

Post by 40four » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 11:50 PM UTC

abellerose wrote: post #56

40four wrote: post #43

Great article, as usual from Nautilus! I would like to add one more myth the list. The idea that we all have a finite amount of brains cells. They used to teach that we’re all born with a certain amount of brain cells, and over time from aging, or getting a concussion, or if you ‘do drugs’, you would lose said cells. And that’s that. No more new brain cells :) We know this to be false now. I don’t know how much this…

Do you have links to share for what you're claiming is now false? I haven't seen any conclusive evidence yet for what you're claiming.

Sure. I’m not an expert or anything, but the term ‘neurogenesis’ would be what you want. I guess the fact that many neurons are formed in the womb, and last our whole lives still holds true, but the realization that at least some parts of the brain continuously generate new cells is significant.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4306487/

From the introduction: ”For a long time, it was thought that the nervous system is fixed and incapable of regeneration. Although it is indeed true that most neurons in the brain are generated before birth and are never exchanged, it is now well established that new neurons are continuously generated by stem cells in at least two discrete regions in the brain throughout life in most mammals: the hippocampus—a seahorse-shaped structure underneath the cortex that is important for memory formation and cognitive functions; and the olfactory bulb (OB)—a structure located above the nasal cavity that is important for the sense of smell.”

“Tongue map” -> https://www.livescience.com/7113-tongue-map-tasteless-myth-d...

To be honest, after reading a little more, I’m a little unclear on if ‘all taste buds taste all flavors’. I might be wrong to say it like that. I saw one thing that said there are actually different types of receptor cells, but they are not isolated into zones, and somewhat evenly distributed across the whole tongue.

Re: Myths about how the brain works

#108

Post by Keyframe » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 11:55 PM UTC

hntrader wrote: post #91

adolph wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discovery of it is pretty interesting. Lithium-rich mineral springs have historically been touted for their healing properties. It was first used for mania in the late 1800s, with Denmark leading the way, but little was published about the medication for more than half a century. https://www.verywellmind.com/lithium-the-first-mood-stabiliz...

This is a good argument as to why we should look closely at traditional medicines of various cultures. We (1) coevolved with this stuff and (2) have gone through generations of trial and error. I'm a believer in modern scientific medicine, but think we often have it backwards. Before reinventing the wheel we should exhaustively test what we used traditionally. Maybe the reason we don't do much of that is that it's no…

You do realize what you're proposing happened and happens extensively?

Re: Myths about how the brain works

#109

Post by hntrader » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 12:35 AM UTC

Keyframe wrote: post #108

hntrader wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good argument as to why we should look closely at traditional medicines of various cultures. We (1) coevolved with this stuff and (2) have gone through generations of trial and error. I'm a believer in modern scientific medicine, but think we often have it backwards. Before reinventing the wheel we should exhaustively test what we used traditionally. Maybe the reason we don't do much of that is that it's no…

You do realize what you're proposing happened and happens extensively?

I've read a decent chunk of that research, but it's often relegated to backwater low-reputation journals focused on alternative medicine and is largely ignored by mainstream science. For an example, see the research on various traditional sleep-inducing drugs.

It also doesn't make its way into mainstream practice among GPs and psychiatrists. As an example, which mainstream practitioner would ever prescribe or recommend curcurmin with piperine for any condition, aside from alternative medicine practitioners? Which psychiatrist would recommend EPA fish oil for depression? I could go on. The research that does exist is largely ignored.

Re: Myths about how the brain works

#110

Post by perryizgr8 » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 1:34 AM UTC

For me the takeaway is that all the "myths" mentioned in here are often simplified abstractions, but they do have underlying truth.

> Brains don’t work by stimulus and response.

They definitely do, eg. when you accidentaly touch a hot object. But that's not all they do. They also have a predicting mode of operation.

> specific parts of the human brain have specific psychological jobs

There are parts of the brain doing specialized things, otherwise why do we still call an area of the brain "visual cortex"? But the brain is much more malleable and plastic than we thought earlier, and entire areas can be repurposed.