Brains don't really smell, but what's amazing about the brain is that it's almost like scrambled eggs or soft tofu, almost like a gel. The brain controls so much of what we do, but you could put your finger right through it.
Genetics is crude, but neuroscience goes directly to work on the brain, and the mind follows.
I'm your mind", it claims. "You can't parse ME into dendrites and synapses
It's not even known how many kinds of cells there are in the brain. If you were looking for a periodic table of the brain, there is no such thing. I really like to think of the brain as a computer.
Neurons are living cells with a metabolism. And they need glucose in order to function. Glucose is the fuel of the brain, just like gasoline is the fuel of your car.
The structure of the human brain is enormously complex. It contains about 10 billion nerve cells (neurons), which are interlinked in a vast network through 1,000 billion junctions (synapses). The whole brain can be divided into subsections, or sub-networks, which communicate with each other in a network fashion. All this results in intricate patterns of intertwined webs, networks of nesting within larger networks.
We cannot experimentally map out the brain. It's just too big. In a piece of the brain the size of a pinhead there are 3,000 pathways like a city with 3,000 streets.
The brain is really hard to see. The whole thing is very large - the human brain is several pounds in weight - but the connections between brain cells, known as synapses, are really tiny. They're nanoscale in dimension. So if you want to see how the cells of the brain are connected in networks, you have to see those connections, those synapses.
The cortex is the enemy.
The three-pound organ in your skull - with its pink consistency of Jell-o - is an alien kind of computational material. It is composed of miniaturized, self-configuring parts, and it vastly outstrips anything we've dreamt of building.
In the brain, you have connections between the neurons called synapses, and they can change. All your knowledge is stored in those synapses. You have about 1,000-trillion synapses - 10 to the 15, it's a very big number.
Nerve cells communicate with one another at specialized points called synapses. And these synapses are plastic - they can be modified by learning.
A typical neuron makes about ten thousand connections to neighboring neurons. Given the billions of neurons, this means there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
In the brain, you have connections between the neurons called synapses, and they can change. All your knowledge is stored in those synapses.
I do love the way the brain looks. I love the way it's shaped.
We have about 100 million cells interconnected in our brains. They communicate with one another through electrical signals.
Playful stimulation probably hits all kinds of synaptic possibilities. It is all make-believe and all over the map. The potentiality of the synapses and the potentiality of playfulness are a beautiful marriage.
A long time ago, Anne used to talk about energy - how that was all that love was - ions connecting across synapses of time and air. Don't rationalize, she'd say. None of it will ever make sense. I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes, not wanting to cry. Anne was right. None of it made any sense.
The actual organization of behavior goes on the level of the individual nerve cells and their connections, and we have a hundred billion nerve cells, probably a hundred trillion connections. It's just mind-boggling to think of all the different ways in which they're arranged in a baby's head.
In our skulls, we carry around 3 pounds of slimy, wet, greyish tissue, corrugated like crumpled toilet paper. You wouldn't think, to look at the unappetizing lump, that it was some of the most powerful stuff in the known universe.
Your brain is built of cells called neurons and glia - hundreds of billions of them. Each one of these cells is as complicated as a city.
The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.
Think of a forest, then imagine taking 10,000 trees and squeezing them together until there is essentially no space between them. That's what the neocortical column looks like.
