Epilogue Summary

By Isabelle Kohn

Epilogue

 

Ramchandran concludes The Tell Tale Brain by reviewing the first nine chapters, reiterating what it is that separates humans from other species, citing self awareness and consciousness as two of the most important things that accomplish this separation. Aesthetics, culture and language are also used as examples of what defines humanity. Ramachandran also points out some key similarities that humans share with other animals to highlight the fact that although we are quite different from animals, we share a few key qualities such as laughter and imagination. Creation and evolution are discussed, and Ramachandran sides with evolution, as it can be validated empirically. He points out that there is still a wealth of information undiscovered about the brain and our origins, and that although a sizable amount of research can, and will be done to elucidate the mysteries of human kind, it is likely that we will never truly be satisfied with these answers and will always seek to define where we came from and why.

Epilouge Summary

Epilogue

 

By Isabelle Kohn

 

Ramchandran concludes The Tell Tale Brain by reviewing the first nine chapters, reiterating what it is that separates humans from other species, citing self awareness and consciousness as two of the most important things that accomplish this separation. Aesthetics, culture and language are also used as examples of what defines humanity. Ramachandran also points out some key similarities that humans share with other animals to highlight the fact that although we are quite different from animals, we share a few key qualities such as laughter and imagination. Creation and evolution are discussed, and Ramachandran sides with evolution, as it can be validated empirically. He points out that there is still a wealth of information undiscovered about the brain and our origins, and that although a sizable amount of research can, and will be done to elucidate the mysteries of human kind, it is likely that we will never truly be satisfied with these answers and will always seek to define where we came from and why.

Reaction Paper

Becca Perry

V.S. Ramachandran asks in the opening line of his book, The Tell-Tale Brain, “Is man an ape or an angel?”  What is it about the human condition that differentiates us from all other species?  Reading The Tell-Tale Brain and watching Antonio Demasio’s documentary on the stroke victim who lost his ability to feel emotion has provided me with some scientific answers to this fundamental question.  One thing’s for certain: it all comes down to the brain.

In The Tell-Tale Brain, Ramachandran proves his point that there exist many complicated regions of the brain that control certain functions that we use as humans.  He uses examples of patients with abnormal or damaged mental conditions to illustrate the ways that the human brain works.  In particular, we learn about things like phantom limbs, strokes, synesthesia, autism, and Broca’s aphasia.  With phantom limbs, Ramachandran describes how the brain can be taught with visual cues to perceive things in new ways.  One stroke patient, John, provides us with a model of how vision occurs in the brain and not the eye given that he can see perfectly fine and yet cannot recognize familiar objects and faces. Synesthesia patients experience dual perception of senses due to the cross activation hypothesis that claims nearby regions in the brain may not be distinctly separated. Autistic people have difficulty with imitation and language learning, which are functions controlled by the mirror neurons that help formulate our sense of self.  Furthermore, people with Broca’s aphasia have a significant spoken language deficit but can still sing perfectly, a condition brought on by language and singing functions being controlled in different hemispheres of the brain.  All of these subjects tell a lot about the human condition – our brains have evolved complex regions where we can process vast amounts of information and successfully communicate through learned symbols.  Our cognitive abilities define us as more than just apes.

The documentary by Antonio Demasio takes a different approach to educate the audience about the human condition.  Instead of focusing on various patients with interesting mental conditions, Demasio chooses to focus on one individual.  Unlike Ramachandran who uses logos to formulate his argument, Demasio uses pathos.  The viewer feels pity for the would-be happy married couple who’s relationship has faced years of hardship brought on by a stroke that damaged the husband’s brain, causing him to loose his emotional attachment to memories and the people around him.  Through this example, we learn the huge role that certain areas of the brain play in our lives, and as humans just what it means socially when aspects such as emotions are taken away from us.  The human condition, this piece argues, starts in the brain but extends to others through our invention of culture and relationships.

The human condition is unique from any other organism.  These two sources, The Tell-Tale Brain by V.S. Ramachandran and the documentary by Antonio Demasio combine to form a view of the human condition as extremely mentally advanced, with capabilities to feel, perceive, and communicate through language and metaphor.  We owe these abilities to our complex, well-evolved brains.  The human condition also has a lot to do with the decisions we make, such as staying with a emotionally- detached partner out of deep-rooted love.  Not only are we mentally superior to other species, but we are unique creatures of culture, society, tradition, and principle.

 

Brainssssssss!

A mysterious and fragile organ, with the ability to imitate, empathize, and reason, the human brain poses questions and contains answers to everything about our past, while also separating us from any other species ever to inhabit the earth.  Its’ ways of thinking and comprehending are unlike any other mammal, despite resembling DNA structure to primates. In mankind’s relatively short existence, the brain has developed so much, yet it still houses all of our innate processes, connecting us still to the primal beings that first evolved the human form.

The field of neuroscience, although only recently explored, is beginning to unwind a lot of the questions we have about ourselves and our origins. In V.S. Ramachandran’s book, The Tell Tale Brain, many patients with neurological disorders are examined to research the functional disabilities that some humans encounter, in order to see cognitive differences between them and a normally functioning human brain. In the case of the phantom limb, amputees’ brains often continue to receive signals from the area where they used to have a limb. However, the brain can adapt through practice. This is an interesting phenomenon and insightful to the development of the brain as being not replacing, but layered. That is, when the brain adopts a new piece of information or a new way to do something, the old ways are not removed but rather new things are added on. This partially explains why humans still hold instinctual behavior, with the ability to evolve.

The brain also has phenomenal ability to learn and by imitation, humans can do practically anything. Ramachandran’s research on mirror neurons is a strong theory on what sets our comprehension apart from that of other animals and extinct hominids. While less developed species can do little to improve ways of life and have nothing but a primal base of technology, humans have evolved to use the earth in every way we can. Mirror neurons allow us to see how someone else does something, and instantly duplicate that action. Furthermore, we understand the purpose of the action and the implications that it holds. Primates have the ability to replicate something, but then take an extremely incomparable amount of practice to actually understand even basic acts. Language is another example of the human capability to communicate ideas. It’s possible that language can also be a development due to mirror neurons, giving humans different ways to communicate and imitate based on their cultures.

Emotion and empathy are also very unique to the human brain. Damasio relates a lot of his ideas to these traits. Relating to emotions that others are experiencing by putting yourself in their situation is a quality which only humans appear to have. Damasio examines a stroke victim who has lost much of his ability to feel emotions and has consequently experienced difficulty with decisions. This means that much of the decision-making we do has an emotional basis, and although often it appears logical to the decider, no decision is purely logical. Humanity then is greatly influenced by the part of the brain that a stroke can affect, and the human condition may be due to empathy and emotion.

As neuroscience attempts to map the control center of humanity and its’ origins, research gives a lot of potential insight. However, the brain remains largely mysterious and as with all knowledge, every answer comes with even more questions. Since neuroscience is still a young field, the future is exciting. Though we will eventually come to better understand ourselves, a conclusion will still stand as an infinite quest.

Ramachandran/ Damasio Reflection

By Isabelle Kohn

The questions that V.S. Ramachandran addresses in The Tell Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human deal principally with where humans as a species came from and what the fundamental differences between humans and all other living creatures are. The human quality to perceive and interpret sensory information differs vastly from the abilities of other species due to minute evolutionary tweaks such as mirror neurons. These specialized cells literally mirror what we see others doing and cause the brain to respond to these observed actions as if the body they control were actually doing the action itself. This is the basis of what Ramachandran believes is empathy, the driving force behind the human creation of culture. When we perceive others behaviors and emotions, we learn to internalize these actions and develop social institutions around their governance. These institutions can both negate and enhance the function as of natural selection, as the decisions we make and act upon often times have nothing to do with survival, but rather to please the culture we have created. Yet, we are the only known species who can logically interpret the decisions we make that are influenced by the needs of evolution such as who to mate with, or what types of activities might lead to social and/or physical death.

Similarly, Damasio makes the connection between perception and interpretation in relation to the stroke victim he studied. Although the patient retained the ability to physically produce emotion, the neurological damage he suffered caused him to lose the ability to feel the emotions his brain signaled. The patient lacked the ability to empathize, and therefore interact socially according the rules that culture imposed upon him (and most humans) such as trying to understand what others are feeling in order to maintain relationships. He was also impaired in the sense that he could not easily make decisions, yet the ability to make informed, logical decisions with the both the influences of the past and future consequences in mind is one of the things that makes humans unique from other species.

Damasio and Ramachandran both seek to understand both the neurological and social underpinnings of sensory perception and emotional interpretation using case studies with real patients. However, Ramachandran does so within the context of human evolution, and consequentially he focuses more on how the human capability to interpret their own emotions as an essential part of survival. He also takes into account how our perception of the world around us causes us to experience aesthetic beauty. Damasio’s focus is how emotion affects interpersonal relationships and decision making, as opposed to its evolutionary causes and effects. Damasio demonstrates how minute alterations to the structure of the brain can have monumental effects on how we relate to ourselves and others. Both Ramachandran and Damasion demonstrate that the anatomy of the brain, in all its apparent triviality, is what has caused humans to invent culture and interpersonal structures as well as critically interpret what we perceive, and this is what fundamentally separates us from other species.

Epilogue

In the epilogue, Ramachandran discusses the rhyme and reason for writing The Tell-Tale Brain, and explains that this is only the first of many steps in understanding the human self.  He further discusses topics that he went over in the first nine chapters, and explains that there is still much more that we need to know, and many more experimentation that needs to be done.  Ramachandran describes some features that we share with animals like imagination, aesthetics, and humor, as well as describing some features that are exclusively human, such as complex language, culture, and metaphor.  He closes with remarks about how man will always wonder how he was created, and may never know the answer to this, no matter how much he knows about the brain.

 

 

Importance of music?

This page contains some research on neuroscience related to music. Found it kind of interesting as music is pleasurable but holds no apparent biological significance.

http://www.zlab.mcgill.ca/supplements/emotion_and_music.html

TTB: Epilogue

In the epilogue, Ramachandran discusses the first nine chapters and what traits make us humans, human. He brings up self-awareness and realization as key abilities that we have, which give us superiority over animals. He also talks about the future of humans and the importance of neuroscience, while opening some topics that remain unanswered. Ramachandran concludes by stating that man will forever be curious of the origin of self, as well as that of the universe.

Assignment 7

Responseà Tell Tale Brain

As humans, we need answers to questions about our origins and our past.  Instead of spending time digging through what biblical stories tell us, it is important for us to look at the organ in charge of our entire beings; the brain.  Both V.S. Ramachandran and Antonio Damasio chose to explore the brain and how it functions to see why humans are unique in shaping their reality.

V.S. Ramachandran ‘s book, The Tell Tale Brain, discusses the networking of the brain in a very unique way.  By using patients and real victims of brain trauma to show the current scientific research on the brain, the book becomes more personal and is more interesting to the reader.  The idea that comes into play multiple times throughout the book deals with the unique qualities in the human brain that make us different from other species.  The mirror neuron alone is an evolutionary mechanism that has given humans an advantage in creating a culture due to perception.  By watching another person’s actions, the brain is functioning as if the viewer was participating as well.  This allows humans to quickly learn to perform by imitating and being aware of surrounding behaviors.  Ramachandran examines patients and the links within the brain to better understand how the brain of humans today differs from primates (our closest known ancestors).

Antonio Damasio’s films take a similar approach to Ramachandran in that specific patients and disorders are looked into as a way of displaying medical research.  A stroke is something we hear of a lot, unfortunately until watching this film I was not able to see how something that affects such a small region of the brain physically can change a life.  Damasio focuses his time connecting emotion to different processes in the brain.  The man that suffered a stroke in his frontal lobe no longer feels any emotion is memory or everyday life.  His wife no longer is able to relate to him at all because without his emotions, he cannot make decisions or feel value in any situation.  It was very difficult to see how much this man suffers due to the loss of activity is such a small portion of the brain.

Within Ramachandran and Damasio’s works, it was much easier to understand the medical and scientific background of the brain and neuroscience in general.  It is now clear that the brain works in pathways; where such a small area controls a great deal of behavioral and chemical processes in the body.  The way the disorders and injuries were shown in real stories with more personal knowledge about the patient, it was easy to connect with the science aspect overall.

Epilogue

Ramachandran ends the book by going over the main ideas he has explored throughout the nine chapters. He stresses the ideas that our inner mind interacts with the outside world constantly. He discusses the idea of “self,” and states that his current research is regarding the influences of self. He follows this by explaining that once we are able to understand how the entire brain works as a network, we can explore what makes us human, or individual. We will be able to follow evolutionary history to determine why humans have such complex systems (mirror neurons) while other animals lack them. This is a huge field that will not stop growing because humans will never stop questioning where they came from. He sums up that the idea of the mirror neuron and the evolutionary response humans have that allows perception and awareness to help build culture that other species do not have.