B2 - Learn how to understand your brain - Listening

How to understand your brain better

Let's find out more about the functioning of our brain

START

"If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't."

/Lyall Watson/

warm-up

Let's get your brain going

What has to be broken before you can use it?

I’m tall when I’m young, and I’m short when I’m old. What am I?

What question can you never answer yes to?

What can you break, even if you never pick it up or touch it?

What gets wet while drying?

ViDEO

Let's watch a video to find out more about how our brain works.

Remember to take notes.For better quality of the video turn off the music in the background.

vocabulary

holy grail

entail

vocabulary

cognitive

preserved

vastness

neuroscience

intact

neurology

interstellar

mediate

wisp

peculiar

recursive

blunting

circuitry

constitute

striking

vocabulary

impostor

Capgras syndrome

lucid

fusiform gyrus

wink

temporal lobes

Oedipus complex

Capgras delusion

cortex

frontal lobes

inhibit

coma

parietal lobes

limbic system

latent

vocabulary

lint

inexplicably

dissipate

gauge

galvanic skin response

prey

ingenious

predator

bizarre

bestiality

adjacent

mate

amygdala

clenched

phantom limb

vocabulary

resurrected

internal viscera

astonishing

spasm

stroke

oxymoron

hysterectomy

focal dystonias

peripheral nerve

compelling

brachial avulsion

dispense

vivid

syneshtesia

tremendous

vocabulary

propensity

proprioception

phrenological

mingle

hereditary

auditory cortex

disembodied

jagged

acid junkie

fiber

denominator

modular

inflection

did you know?

The brain can’t feel pain There are no pain receptors in the brain itself. But the meninges (coverings around the brain), periosteum (coverings on the bones), and the scalp all have pain receptors. Surgery can be done on the brain and technically the brain does not feel that pain.

did you know?

Brain activity can power a small light bulb When you are awake, your brain generates about 12-25 watts of electricity – which is enough to power a small light bulb. The brain also works fast. The information going from your arms/legs to your brain travels at a speed of 150-260 miles per hour. The brain consumes glucose from the body to produce this amount of the energy.

did you know?

Exercise is just as good for your brain as it is for your body Aerobic exercise raises your heart rate and increases blood flow to your brain. As your increased breathing pumps more oxygen into your bloodstream, more oxygen is delivered to your brain. This leads to neurogenesis—or the production of neurons—in certain parts of your brain that control memory and thinking. Neurogenesis increases brain volume, and this cognitive reserve is believed to help buffer against the effects of dementia.

Your idioms for today

pick someone's brain

all that glitters is not gold

Your phrase for today

be like a kid in a candy store

Your adjectives for today

across-the-board

so-called

Your noun for today

pin-up

Let's check what you remember

TRUE OR FALSE

Fusiform gyrus is responsible for face recognition.

Let's check what you remember

TRUE OR FALSE

When one part of brain gets damaged, it usually impairs our overall mental capacities.

Let's check what you remember

TRUE OR FALSE

Freudian theory about the co-called Oedipus complex talks about latent bestiality of all humans.

QUESTION TIME

Given that our brain has a large spectrum of abilities, how can we find out which parts of the brain are responsible for what?

QUESTION TIME

What’s the difference between Capgras syndrome and Capgras delusion?

QUESTION TIME

What is the most common interpretation of the Capgras delusion? Does Vilayanur Ramachandran, neurologist and brain expert, agree with this interpretation? Why or why not?

QUESTION TIME

Where in the brain is the amygdala and what is it responsible for?

QUESTION TIME

How does Dr Vilayanur Ramachandran explain the Capgras delusion?

QUESTION TIME

How can we test our emotional response to objects or people we are looking at? How does it help us test the Capgras delusion?

QUESTION TIME

Why people with the Capgras delusion can recognize their mother’s voice if they are not looking at her face?

QUESTION TIME

Are patients who suffer from phantom limb syndrome delusional? Why or why not?

QUESTION TIME

What is learned paralysis and how does it affect phantom limbs?

QUESTION TIME

How to unlearn the learned paralysis?

QUESTION TIME

What is synesthesia and what is it caused by?

QUESTION TIME

How does Dr Vilayanur Ramachandran show that everyone has synesthesia?

thank you

tremendousproprioceptiondisembodiedfiberinflectionsyneshtesiaminglehereditaryacid junkiepotheadmodularpropensityphrenologicalauditory cortexjaggeddenominator

ogromnypropriocepcja (czucie głębokie w mięśniach i ścięgnach)bezcielesnywłóknofleksjasynestezjamieszać siędziedzicznyćpun kwasuzjarus, palacz marihuanymodułowyskłonnośćfrenologicznykora słuchowapostrzępionymianownik

Synesthesia is a mingling of the senses – more than one sense is experienced simultaneously e.g., when a person sees a number or a musical note, it’s coloured. The colour and the number areas are next to each other in the brain, and they get crossed wired in some people. Synesthesia is hereditary, it’s a mutation in the gene which causes the abnormal cross wiring.

FALSE - damage to a small region of the brain doesn't cause an across-the-board reduction of cognitive ability.

Hebbian TheoryHebbian theory asserts that “neurons that fire together, wire together,” meaning that when activity in one cell repeatedly elicits action potentials in a second cell, synaptic strength is potentiated.

This is to ask someone who knows a lot about a subject for information or their opinion:Can I pick your brain about how you got rid of those weeds?

FALSE - Oedipus complex of Freud says that young babies feel strong sexual attraction to the opposite sex parent.

We can use galvanic skin response method which measures how people sweat while looking at various pictures. People don’t sweat when looking at trivial objects like a table but seeing a picture of a tiger, a pin-up or their mother, causes sweating. People with the Capgras delusion don’t sweat even when seeing a picture of a tiger or their mother, as the wire going from the visual to the emotional areas is cut.

The interpretation most common in the psychiatry textbooks is the Freudian view about being sexually attracted to a parent of opposite sex as a young baby. As we grow up, the cortex develops and inhibits the latent sexual urges. However, when we suffer a head injury which damages the cortex these latent sexual urges flame to the surface, bringing the sexual attraction to a parent back. The damaged brain makes an interpretation that we can’t be attracted to our own mother (if we’re a man) therefore she must be an imposter. Dr Ramachandran doesn’t agree with this interpretation as he had an experience with a patient who claimed that their pet poodle was an impostor. If the Freudian explanation of the Capgras delusion was true, we might need to presume that humans suffer from latent bestiality, and that would be absurd.

It all starts with a paralysis of an intact limb which can be caused by an accident and a peripheral nerve injury. E.g., we have a motorcycle accident and the nerve supplying the arm gets severed. The paralyzed and painful arm is kept in a sling for an extended period. Eventually, in a misguided attempt to get rid of the pain, the surgeon amputates the arm, but the pain gets carried over into the phantom itself. How does it happen? While the arm was paralyzed but intact, the brain kept sending signals to it to move yet kept getting the visual feedback of no movement. This got wired into the circuitry of the brain and caused learned paralysis. Because of the Hebbian, associative link the brain learns that the command to move, causes a sensation of a paralyzed arm. When the arm is amputated, the learned paralysis is carried over into the body image and into the phantom.

Dr Vilayanur Ramachandran says that what we look at is processed by the fusiform gyrus, and we can recognize what we are looking at as, e.g., a table or our mother. Then the message cascades to the amygdala, and then down to the autonomic nervous system. However, if the wire which goes from the amygdala to the limbic system, the emotional core of the brain, was cut while the fusiform gyrus was intact, we would be able to recognize faces but without any emotional reaction to them. We wouldn’t feel any warmth or terror towards our mother, and that would be confusing. We would say: “She looks like my mother, but I have no feelings towards her therefore she can’t be my mother. She’s an impostor.”

This is often said about something that seems to be good on the surface, but might not be when you look at it more closely. However, as he matures, he discovers that all that glitters is not gold.

Dr Vilayanur Ramachandran shows two symbols to the audience. One is spiky and jagged, and the other one is blobby and curvy. He then asks the audience which one is Kiki and which one is Bouba. 98 % of the audience makes the same decision, naming the jagged symbol as Kiki and the blobby one as Bouba. Dr Ramachandran explains it as a cross-model synesthetic abstraction. The sound ki-ki has a sharp inflection and it mimics the visual inflection of the jagged shape. Photons is our eye are doing the shape, hair cells in our ear are exciting the auditory pattern but the brain can extract the common denominator.

latentinexplicably ingenious bestiality amygdala limbic system gauge prey predator mate lint dissipate galvanic skin response bizarre adjacent

utajonyniewytłumaczalnie pomysłowy bestialstwo ciało migdałowate układ limbiczny wskaźnik/miernik zdobycz drapieżnik partner kłaczki rozpraszać się reakcja skórno-galwaniczna dziwaczny przylegający

Although the wire from the visual to the emotional areas of the brain is cut, people can still recognize voices as there is a separate pathway going from the hearing centres of the brain to the emotional centres.

We need to send a command to the phantom to move and give it visual feedback that it is obeying the order. We can do this with the help of a mirror box. It’s a cardboard box with a mirror in the middle. The patient puts his paralyzed – clenched and in spasm - phantom limb on one side of the mirror, and the healthy limb on the other side. The healthy limb needs to take the same clenched posture. The patient looks at the reflection of the healthy arm in the mirror, and it looks as if the phantom has been resurrected. Now the command is given to wiggle the real fingers. Thanks to the mirror, the patient gets the visual impression that the phantom is moving as well. In this way, the pain, the clenching spasm is released. The patient needs to practice this with the mirror box until unlearning the paralysis.

Patients with phantom limb have compelling, vivid sensations of their removed body part. About half the patients with phantom limb claim that they can move their phantom. They are not delusional as they know their amputated limb or removed organ are not there. They just have a compelling sensory experience of them.

- a picture of a sexually attractive and usually famous person, especially someone wearing few clothes:Every wall in her bedroom was covered with pin-ups of her favourite pop star. - (informal) a person who is seen in pin-ups: With his perfect college-boy looks, he's the latest teenage pin-up.

This means affecting everyone or everything within an organization, system, or society:The proposed across-the-board cuts for all state agencies will total $84 million.

Amygdala is in the limbic system which is the emotional core of the human brain. It gauges the emotional significance of what we are looking at. E.g., it gauges whether what we are looking at is a prey, a predator, a mate or something completely trivial like a piece of lint or a shoe. The amygdala sends signals to the autonomic nervous system whether what we are looking at causes an emotional response. E.g., seeing a predator would cause our heart to beat faster, and we would start sweating to dissipate the heat created from muscular exertion.

pociągać za sobą ogrom międzygwiezdny osobliwy powtarzalny święty graal neuronauka (nauka o mózgu i układzie nerwowym) neurologia strużka, smuga tępienie poznawczy zachowany nienaruszony pośredniczyć obwód

entailvastness interstellar peculiar recursive holy grail neuroscience neurology wisp blunting cognitive preserved intact mediate circuitry

phantom limbinternal viscera hysterectomy compelling vivid clenched spasm oxymoron peripheral nerve brachial avulsion resurrected astonishing stroke focal dystonias dispense

fantomowa kończynatrzewia/organy wewnętrzne histerektomia (usunięcie macicy) przekonujący żywy zaciśnięty skurcz oksymoron (wyrażenie łączące dwa sprzeczne znaczeniowo wyrazy) nerw obwodowy awulsja nerwu ramiennego wskrzeszony zdumiewający udar ogniskowe dystonie dozować

This is to be very happy and excited about the things around you, and often react to them in a way that is silly and not controlled:You should have seen him when they arrived. He was like a kid in a candy store. We took my dad to a boat show and he was like a kid in a candy store. I'm like a kid in a candy store when I go into a bookshop.

Both, Capgras syndrome and Capgras delusion occur when a little structure called fusiform gyrus is damaged. The fusiform gyrus is responsible for face recognition. The difference is that people who suffer from Capgras syndrome can’t recognize faces at all, including that of their own. When people with Capgras delusion see a familiar face, they think it’s an impostor. For example, they will say: “This person looks exactly like my mother, but it’s not her. It’s an impostor.”

strikingCapgras syndrome temporal lobes frontal lobes parietal lobes constitute fusiform gyrus wink Capgras delusion coma impostor lucid Oedipus complex cortex inhibit

uderzający Zespół Capgrasa płaty skroniowe płaty czołowe płaty ciemieniowe stanowić zakręt wrzecionowaty (odpowiedzialny za rozpoznawanie twarzy) mrugnięcie złudzenie Capgrasa śpiączka oszust/fałszerz/pozorant świadomy Kompleks Edypa kora mózgowa hamować

There are many ways to do that. One approach is to look at patients with sustained damage to a particular part of the brain. When a small region of the brain gets damaged, our overall cognitive ability stays preserved intact. A loss of function is highly selective which gives us confidence that that part of the brain is involved in mediating that function.

This is used to show that you think a word that is used to describe someone or something is not suitable or not correct:It was one of his so-called friends who supplied him with the drugs that killed him. - used to introduce a new word or phrase that is not yet known by many people: It isn't yet clear how dangerous these so-called "super-rats" are.

TRUE - fusiform gyrus is a little structure tucked away inside the inner surface of the temporal lobes. When it's damaged, we can no longer recognize people's faces, including our own.