Just how good is the human brain .

The reason i am starting this is because of what happened last night . Now ultimately this is my fault but . Well i will get down to it . I needed to go do the relief thing last night , no biggie , it was dark and i know my way to the door but then i was hit with . Lego brick , yes i not only trod on the Lego but i instantly knew what piece of Lego it was . Easy i know , the smaller the Lego the bigger the hurt . Then i was thinking today . Your brain is pretty cool . You can navigate around your home without any external references . You can put a glass of water down at night before going to bed then wake up and grab the glass first time . Jeez you can even tell if someone is staring at you without seeing them .. I would be interested to hear other ATS members example of the brain at work .

Just as much as it is bad?




(Pandoras Box) 'See whats inside'

18 Gigabytes per second transferd from the eyes to the brain.

The brain is an incredible device.

It ensures your body is functioning in prime condition, by regulating water, food, heating, cooling, waste removal.

I drives your car around, while you are in a trance at the wheel, it has created every single wonder, and accomplishment we see around us.

It is the most remarkable piece of equipment we will ever know.

Yours let you down last night, mine would have swerved that Lego brick.

Peace.

a reply to: CraftBuilder

18 Gigabytes per second transferd from the eyes to the brain.

Is that right . I guess we see in ultra ultra high definition . Well i did until recently .

a reply to: Watchfull

Yours let you down last night, mine would have swerved that Lego brick.

Hmmm but lego bricks are tricky , always there for the unseeing .

And almost as powerful as a cats brain...

I once wondered why I seem to be able to get around really well in the dark. There are times I actually feel more effective if I close my eyes (like when doing something difficult with my fingers, I will close my eyes and rely totally on my sense of feel). My sense of sight sometimes distracts my brain and body from tasks.

I read about the theories of different forms of intelligence, and it reminded me of testing they did on us when kids at school, to determine what specific skills we are strongest at. Mine had something to do with spatial perception and sensory awareness- which is highly influence by your ability to imagine, visualize and manipulate images in the mind.

I can get through my house in total darkness without stubbing my toe, and feeling very confident in relation to my surroundings because my mind is visualizing the space clearly, based on memory. And the slightest sensory input is integrated quickly into that imaging. I know that I am about to run into something in the dark because I feel a very slight change in temperature, residual heat stored in the thing from when the house was filled with sunlight earlier.

Touching one corner, I can, from there, see in mind exactly where other things are in relation. When I am doing things with my hands (like saddling up my horse, sometimes having to reach around and adjust equipment when I cannot see them,) closing my eyes allows my brain to focus completely on every slight sensation- whereas my eyes will often focus on other things in the space and make me less aware of the sensation.

I've come to really rely a lot on my body and imagination. I am a cook, and when working with others in the kitchen, I keep a running interior vision of the whole space and who is where and when. It doesn't take any conscious effort though- my brain does it for me, using every tiny sound and sensation to keep track of everyone.
It is a rather fascinating way we do this sort of ballet around each other, often with potential dangerous stuff in our hands (hot pans, big knives, big trays of food), yet turn and weave around each other effortlessly, sometimes within a centimeter of each other. I once thought it would be interesting to film this process going on, and put some classical music to it!

a reply to: CraftBuilder

Unfortunately thats how i will feel tomorrow after Australia day .Kind of stunned looking and in need of a good back scratch .

a reply to: Bluesma

That is the kind of thing i was looking for .

There are many things which amaze me about the human brain. I find it interesting that computers are often bad at the things the human brain is good at, and vice versa. For example the human brain sucks at elementary math operations but a computer can multiply and divide mind bogglingly huge numbers in a fraction of a second. On the other hand the human brain can quickly pick out one face from a group of hundreds, and a computer will perform poorly at the same task. The human brain will understand what another person is saying even if they have never met that person and the person has a heavy accent. A computer will struggle with voice analysis and translation, especially when faced with a new voice which it has never been trained to understand.

Another thing the brain can do, which I think we often take for granted, is our ability to imagine 3D objects within our mind. For example I can visualize a cube in my mind, and I can even rotate that cube and inspect it from different angles. I can stretch it and mold it, break it apart or add new parts to it. I can also do the same thing with objects which are much more complicated and irregular than a cube. For a computer to create a 3D cube, and then make the cube rotate or stretch, you need to build a complicated graphics engine which usually involves advanced algebra and heavy use of matrices and vectors. It's not a simple task for the computer to manipulate 3D objects, yet we can create entire dream worlds inside our mind which look entirely convincing to us, like virtual reality.

Brains are pretty impressive machines. There is room for improvement, but we work with what we have at this stage of evolution.
A while back I was camping on the edge of a lake in the hill country. I was drinking and for some reason had an urge to trot down the steep, rocky hill to the water. It was nearly pitch black and the terrain was dangerous. You could easily slip and break an ankle in the day.
I just trotted down at a full jog, navigating the rocks like a mountain goat. I got to the lake and then realized what I had just done. I was impressed with myself and thankful for the self preservation abilities of the brain.

If I only had a brain...

originally posted by: Bluesma
I once wondered why I seem to be able to get around really well in the dark. There are times I actually feel more effective if I close my eyes (like when doing something difficult with my fingers, I will close my eyes and rely totally on my sense of feel). My sense of sight sometimes distracts my brain and body from tasks.

I read about the theories of different forms of intelligence, and it reminded me of testing they did on us when kids at school, to determine what specific skills we are strongest at. Mine had something to do with spatial perception and sensory awareness- which is highly influence by your ability to imagine, visualize and manipulate images in the mind.

I can get through my house in total darkness without stubbing my toe, and feeling very confident in relation to my surroundings because my mind is visualizing the space clearly, based on memory. And the slightest sensory input is integrated quickly into that imaging. I know that I am about to run into something in the dark because I feel a very slight change in temperature, residual heat stored in the thing from when the house was filled with sunlight earlier.

Touching one corner, I can, from there, see in mind exactly where other things are in relation. When I am doing things with my hands (like saddling up my horse, sometimes having to reach around and adjust equipment when I cannot see them,) closing my eyes allows my brain to focus completely on every slight sensation- whereas my eyes will often focus on other things in the space and make me less aware of the sensation.

I've come to really rely a lot on my body and imagination. I am a cook, and when working with others in the kitchen, I keep a running interior vision of the whole space and who is where and when. It doesn't take any conscious effort though- my brain does it for me, using every tiny sound and sensation to keep track of everyone.
It is a rather fascinating way we do this sort of ballet around each other, often with potential dangerous stuff in our hands (hot pans, big knives, big trays of food), yet turn and weave around each other effortlessly, sometimes within a centimeter of each other. I once thought it would be interesting to film this process going on, and put some classical music to it!

My brother and I used to do "blindfold" games as kids. We blindfold the other and move stuff around then make the other go find a specific item. For example, put the crackers with the cereal, or put the Kool-Aid with the milk, then as the person to find the Kool-Aid, or find the crackers after going up and down the stairs, and spinning 4 times. I was usually better at than him, but after conditioning, if you will, he got better. He always asked me how I knew, I would tell him, the crackers were heavier than cereal, for one example, Kool-Aid doesn't smell the same as milk smells, is another. You learn to rely on your other senses, rather than just your sight. To this day, I can see in the dark just fine. It doesn't bother me a bit.

Our brain is extremely amazing machines inside of our bodies. We can even have a part of it die, such as a stroke, and the rest of our brain will take over the function dead brain did. We can impale ourselves on some large metal rod or stick that should by all rights kill us, and yet someone manages to live through it. Someone can live for years with a bullet in their brain, or a remnant of one, and never know until they all of a sudden develop headaches down the road.

My own personal experience?

I have a daughter that was born missing part of her brain. It just never formed in the first 3 months of fetal development. It is the part of the brain that connects the left half of the brain with the right. It contains over 250 million nerve fibers. She is missing every single one of them. She has what is considered a "split brain" personality because technically she has two brains, a left one and a right one. Each tell the body what to do at the same time, confusing the body. At age 5 we had to teach her how to toss a ball from one hand to the other. Something we take for granted daily.

A good way to describe her brain is to put it the way her doctor described it to me. Think of NY state as the body. Now NYC is one half the brain. Buffalo is the other half. Now there is no phone line, no computer, no road, no nothing connecting Buffalo and NYC, but both cities are telling NY how to run. Of course, naturally, NY is listening to Buffalo and NYC at the same time, and following both conflicting orders at the same time leading to a very confusing state (Let's go with analogy, not politics this time.) There is no way to "fix" NY, except to offer behavioral therapy and medication. She IS one of the lucky ones however. There are some children born with this who will never walk, talk, and need a feeding tube the rest of their life. She doesn't need that and is QUITE talkative. However she does have a LOT of disorders, including Autism, epilepsy, sensory integration dysfunction, oppositional defiant disorder, dyslexia, dysgraphia (handwriting disorder, her writing is that of a 2nd grader and she is almost 20 now.) Her IQ is 50 which puts her at moderate mental retardation, mostly due to missing part of her brain, the autism, and missing oxygen at birth. She operates on a 2nd level, however, don't let her fool you, she is VERY smart!

a reply to: Anyafaj

I am so sorry to hear about your daughters condition . I remember watching something on cable a long time ago about the left side of the brain attacking the right , or vice versa . This was an actual physical attack as in one arm fighting off the other . Seems both sides were separated somehow . You say she is very smart , is this savant like qualities or something else . God only knows how frustrated she must feel . I wish all the best for you and your daughter .

originally posted by: hutch622
a reply to: Anyafaj

I am so sorry to hear about your daughters condition . I remember watching something on cable a long time ago about the left side of the brain attacking the right , or vice versa . This was an actual physical attack as in one arm fighting off the other . Seems both sides were separated somehow . You say she is very smart , is this savant like qualities or something else . God only knows how frustrated she must feel . I wish all the best for you and your daughter .

Sometimes it is musical. For example, once we got her a keyboard that she immediately squirreled away up to her room and began playing Twinkle Little Star. Mind you she had never been taught to play it and it wasn't one of the preprogrammed songs either. She just played it by ear. She plays guitar lovely, when she's not fooling around and just mashing on it. Mostly it is art. Sometimes she will come home with art a second grader made, but now and then, she makes something so breathtaking it's hard to imagine the same person made it. Some of what she has made has an Impressionistic feel to it, and some has an almost Dali-like feel. I, of course, have saved those. Like me when I was younger, now she is into writing stories. She has a very creative mind, something I encourage with her.

She does get frustrated from time to time, but I encourage her to find something to laugh about each day. We have a wonderful dog that helps her to laugh. I cherish her, so please, don't feel sorry for her. She almost died the day she was born, and I almost died giving birth to her due to Listeria Sepsis. The entire pregnancy I was told I had the flu. Towards the end as she was going into distress and they pulled her out, they noticed the placenta was green. This is an indication of an infection as I guess that's not the color it should be. Even though she didn't have it, she was dead and had to be revived 3 times, so she had to be treated for it nonetheless. But, we are both here to tell our amazing story, and she has an amazing brain.

In fact her brain is a medical oddity. She has seizures in both halves of the brain. Most doctors will surgically remove this part of the brain to stop severe seizures from jumping into the other half of the brain for people with severe seizure disorder. My daughter does not half this particular part of the brain, and yet, somehow, still has seizures in both halves of the brain without the bridge to allow the seizures to go from one half to the other. Her neurologist thinks she is a miracle and a medical oddity at the same time. LOL

a reply to: Anyafaj

I would urge you to keep all her art , even the grade 2 stuff , who knows one day it may become very valuable , even more so than it is to you . Who knows one day she might be treatable , they have recently connected severed spinal cords using nasal tissue . Lets hope .

originally posted by: hutch622
a reply to: Anyafaj

I would urge you to keep all her art , even the grade 2 stuff , who knows one day it may become very valuable , even more so than it is to you . Who knows one day she might be treatable , they have recently connected severed spinal cords using nasal tissue . Lets hope .

I keep as much as everything she does as possible without making my apartment look like a Hoarders episode. LOL She loves looking at the stuff she's done in the past and the hearing the stories with it. For her the stories I tell are the best part. For me, her old art is the best and the time together.

a reply to: hutch622

When you step on that Lego piece and some how manage not to scream every swear word you know in a row... Not drop the glass of water you're carrying... and just let out an "ouch... that hurt"


bloody amazing...