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Showing posts from April, 2013

You are your brain

It is a puzzling mental exercise to reflect upon the processes behind your own thoughts. Philosophers have been struggling with the problem of consciousness for ages and recently entered into dialog with neuroscientists to look for its neural correlates. The road to understanding how the human brain works is very long and we have only just started this journey. Despite efforts of many great minds, our knowledge of mechanisms underlying human activities such as  love, compassion, problem solving, speech, or even vision is still far from complete. Undeniably we have made some progress: we have learned how to map different brain areas to minimize damage during brain surgeries, treat depression and Parkinson’s disease by directly stimulating a particular part of the brain and develop drugs that alter chemicals in the brain and allow to manage some mental disorders. Despite the limitations of our knowledge one thing is certain: whoever we are, whatever we do, and whatever we feel o