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Myths about the brain

nautil.us

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Re: Myths about the brain

#41

Post by gus_massa »

bjornsing wrote: post #21

> Scientists have believed for a long time that severe damage to the visual cortex in the left side of your brain will leave you unable to see out of your right eye, assuming that the ability to see out of one eye is largely due to the visual cortex on the opposite side. IIRC it’s well known that the left hemisphere processes visual stimuli from the right field of view of both eyes…

I think you are correct. For example in https://www.rch.org.au/kidsinfo/fact_sheets/Brain_injury_Eye... look at the graphic under the title "Visual field defect"

Re: Myths about the brain

#42

Post by robga »

I was surprised that the ‘you only use x% of your brain’ canard was not discussed.

Whenever I read articles like this I feel the field is about 150 years behind other sciences. What I fail to grasp is whether they are marooned at this point, will always lag a distance, or rapidly advance. I hope it’s the latter but I read little evidence.

Re: Myths about the brain

#43

Post by dr_dshiv »

No citations are provided for the myth of triune brain. Too bad. What’s with the cerebellum? That never fit, anyway.

“It continues to hold public interest because of its simplicity. While inaccurate in many respects as an explanation for brain activity, structure and evolution, it remains one of very few approximations of the truth we have to work with: the "neocortex" represents that cluster of brain structures involved in advanced cognition, including planning, modeling and simulation; the "limbic brain" refers to those brain structures, wherever located, associated with social and nurturing behaviors, mutual reciprocity, and other behaviors and affects that arose during the age of the mammals; and the "reptilian brain" refers to those brain structures related to territoriality, ritual behavior and other "reptile" behaviors.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain

Re: Myths about the brain

#44

Post by jcims »

sowbug wrote: post #28
NikolaNovak wrote: post #7

I love articles like this. But I have NO facility or background to evaluate them. Given their premise is "everything you've been told is wrong", how do I know that this one is right? :-/ I just finished Blindsight, which is a SciFi novel but written by PhD Biologist and highly respected in Neurological circles... which pretty much commits to every.single.one. of these 'myths'. Note, this is not an issue of "it's a yo…

If you find the subject interesting and would like to read more, I recommend Jeff Hawkins' A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence , which was released earlier this year and covers a theory that a large part of your brain is made of 150,000 near-identical subsystems called "cortical columns." It's geared toward people who have little background in neuroscience. You might also follow up with Anil Seth's "contr…

Hawkins has been on Lex Fridmans podcast at least twice now. I think the first one is when he dives into this a bit. I don’t know where he’s at in the spectrum between right and wrong but i found that his ideas mapped well to my subjective experience of thinking, particularly the hierarchical reference frame concepts.

Re: Myths about the brain

#46

Post by rurp »

I'm surprised to learn the third myth is even a myth. My thoughts and feelings change significantly when I switch from sitting to walking/running or move from an indoor room to sitting outside in the sun. When I go from being in shape to out of shape my brain feels much more lethargic. I could go on but the general point is that changes in my physical condition have a big impact on my mental processes and vice versa.

I had thought these responses were normal and the body and brain are deeply linked to each other. Do most people not feel these same effects?

Re: Myths about the brain

#47

Post by Terry_Roll »

treeman79 wrote: post #6
feoren wrote: post #3

> [Myth 1] specific parts of the human brain have specific psychological jobs ... [Rebuttal] Neurons in a brain region called the anterior cingulate cortex are regularly involved in memory, emotion, decision-making, pain, moral judgments, imagination, attention, and empathy. This is not a rebuttal to the myth. Imagine I'm talking about a car, and I say: It's a myth that specific parts of the car have specific functio…

Suffered some minor strokes. Right left brain stuff was interesting. Lost ability to hand write. But could draw fine. Right side of body became very weak and numb. Some mental stuff was fine. Others were not. Last I looked up it seemed to match left and right brain theory. Creative vs math side, etc.

No post body was provided.

Re: Myths about the brain

#48

Post by saalweachter »

treeman79 wrote: post #6
feoren wrote: post #3

> [Myth 1] specific parts of the human brain have specific psychological jobs ... [Rebuttal] Neurons in a brain region called the anterior cingulate cortex are regularly involved in memory, emotion, decision-making, pain, moral judgments, imagination, attention, and empathy. This is not a rebuttal to the myth. Imagine I'm talking about a car, and I say: It's a myth that specific parts of the car have specific functio…

Suffered some minor strokes. Right left brain stuff was interesting. Lost ability to hand write. But could draw fine. Right side of body became very weak and numb. Some mental stuff was fine. Others were not. Last I looked up it seemed to match left and right brain theory. Creative vs math side, etc.

I mean, cases like yours are one of the ways we learn about brain function.

Historically it was more about people who had some part of their brain removed or otherwise grossly damaged, but the principle is the same: when people lose part of their brain, how does their mind change? What can they still do, what can they not?

Re: Myths about the brain

#49

Post by coldtea »

rurp wrote: post #46

I'm surprised to learn the third myth is even a myth. My thoughts and feelings change significantly when I switch from sitting to walking/running or move from an indoor room to sitting outside in the sun. When I go from being in shape to out of shape my brain feels much more lethargic. I could go on but the general point is that changes in my physical condition have a big impact on my mental processes and vice versa.…

>I'm surprised to learn the third myth is even a myth.

Well, it's a "popular science" article. Even peer reviewed, well-cited papers are often unfounded BS (including "meta-studies", which are even easier to mess), so I wouldn't place much confidence in all the myths mentioned actually being myths (and vice versa).

Re: Myths about the brain

#50

Post by jonnycomputer »

Of course there is localization of function in the brain. Just because you see a lot of raw activity in the brain at any one time doesn't contradict that: the brain is doing lots of things at the same time too. But more importantly, more than one function may be necessary to achieve any particular behavior. Think of all that has to go on to type a message in a forum like this. Motor control of the fingers, memory of key-letter mappings, language, syntax, vocabulary, and organization of thought. Sure, typing a message in a web forum doesn't have a specific localization in the brain, but we wouldn't exactly expect that would we. Instead, we have functions to differentiate, associate, evaluate, to localize, generalize, infer, predict. The mechanics of reinforcement learning, for example, are predictably localized in specific brain regions in the caudate.

I think articles like this do more harm than good. The brain is not an undifferentiated connectionist network.

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