So, how would you like a railroad spike through the brain? Do you think an injury like that would kill someone? Not necessarily, as the case of Phineas Gage showed ( The Incredible Case of Phineas Gage). Rare incidents like the one with Phineas Gage were all researchers once had to go on to figure out the workings of the human brain, and they led to some interesting theories. However, with advancing technology, researchers have gone from studying brain trauma to taking pictures of live brains to actually watching brains as they work ( What is fMRI?)! As you might imagine, this is leading to a much greater understanding of what's going on in our noggins.
- Learning vs. Remembering - A Brain Battle? from AMNH http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmolqUslEJk
No Duh's and Head Scratchers
If you need help scratching a mental itch, use the resources below:
- Can most people's brains learn and remember at the same time? What does the brain do to handle these tasks? Does this seem right to you or do you feel your brain is different?
- Do you think your brain has one switchboard to manage multiple tasks or multiple switchboards? Why do you favor one choice over the other? What sorts of information would you need to gather to test your hypothesis?
- How does the discovery of switchboards in the brain compare to older theories of certain tasks being isolated to certain areas of the brain? Do you think these models are compatible? Why or why not?
Researchers did not always have access to images like this! Thanks to new technology, old ideas are changing, and new ideas are being born.