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10 Unsolved Mysteries Of The Brain

discovermagazine.com — What we know—and don’t know—about how we think.

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  • sixthplanet, on 10/10/2007, -3/+10Nice find. Really interesting article. It's weird how light travels faster than sound, yet our brains perceive sound faster than light.
    • BigManOnCampus, on 10/10/2007, -2/+12That's not entirely correct. Our brains perceive light just as fast as sound... our brains do not perceive IMAGES as fast as sound. Images are much harder to process than sound as anyone who programs multimedia programs will tell you.

      If you were an insect who's only sight was light-or-dark, you would perceive that just as fast as you perceived sound.

      Also take note, that while you may perceive sound fast, it typically will take you a moment or two to recognize even your favorite song.
      • MasterThief117, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5Actually, I can tell what song it is by hearing the first chord.
        • eohano, on 10/10/2007, -12/+2That was the most blatantly idiotic comment i have read heard on digg, and that is saying something.
        • Evacide, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5@eohano
          You fail. He's right.
        • mtrip, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3You can tell after a brief pause in which your brain receives, and then interprets the noise as music, and then provides the context (which song). We don't perceive reality in real time.
    • jmontes, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1FTA: "For example, snap your fingers in front of you. Although your auditory system processes information about the snap about 30 milliseconds faster than your visual system, the sight of your fingers and the sound of the snap seem simultaneous. Your brain is employing fancy editing tricks to make simultaneous events in the world feel simultaneous to you, even when the different senses processing the information would individually swear otherwise."

      This is an example of why this article is lame. A human is supposed to be able to detect that events that happen 30ms apart? That's only 0.03 seconds. There's 33 such periods in a second.
      • eviltandem, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I can tell when the audio on a movie I download is off by almost nothing (easily less than a second). It's really annoying to try and watch.

        What I thought was most interesting is that this doesn't seem to be tweak-able. One would think if my brain did all this work to sync things up, it would try to sync the audio on that video without it having to be perfect. But it doesn't.
  • tblasko, on 10/10/2007, -0/+34Anyone else sit and think about these sometimes and have a total mind ***** experience

    Headings FTA

    1. How is information coded in neural activity?
    2. How are memories stored and retrieved?
    3. What does the baseline activity in the brain represent?
    4. How do brains simulate the future?
    5. What are emotions?
    6. What is intelligence?
    7. How is time represented in the brain?
    8. Why do brains sleep and dream?
    9. How do the specialized systems of the brain integrate with one another?
    10. What is consciousness?
    • archer104, on 10/10/2007, -0/+411. Does your consciousness lie in the exact sperm and egg that made you? If yes, would you not exist if that sperm had been a second too late and another took its place? If yes, do you realize the astronomical odds that you can come into being given the amount of sperm that is made in a human male, the number of eggs in a female, and the number of humans alive at a given time? Talk about lucky to be alive.
    • donkeySays, on 10/10/2007, -1/+212. Is consciousness really in the brain?
      13. Since the brain is responsible for the perception of a brain as we know, how do we know what a brain really is and how it looks like and works? Analogy: the perception of the CPU by the RAM/program.
      • HairyFotr, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1A computer program can emulate the same system it is running on (except it would need more storage if you'd want to emulate its storage and all systems also, and it might not be easy or fast, but Turing completeness says you can, actually it even says you could simulate it on a simpler system if it was Turing complete). But there is no need for one man to understand his own brain as a whole all the time, so it's not exactly the same CPU looking at himself situation, it's more reverse-engineering bit by bit, and slowly getting a good picture of what is going on in general in the brain. So we have several slightly specialised processors (lets call its human equivalent a neuroscientist) analyzing parts of a system similar to itself, and finding out what a certain part outputs at a given input. I realize brain scanners don't give answers as clear and as accurate as gate logic does and that processor analysis is extremely hard if you don't really know what it does, but that's basically what neuroscientists are doing right now, and AFAIK they are making quite a lot of progress.
      • gmaskew, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1There was a story once about a guy who had a heart transplant and immediately found new tastes in things from the donor's interests (like music, food etc) that he hadn't had before. I think neurologists supported this by saying that the heart had it's own internal nervous system tightly linked with the brain and information wasn't just stored in the brain but possibly across the whole nervous system. I found an article about a woman with this experience. http://www.lostartsofthemind.com/2006/11/can-your-heart-think-and-feel.html
  • veeshy, on 10/10/2007, -3/+53dugg for putting the list page 3 first.
    • jackal230, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1Actually, it was pretty lame linking to the 3rd page. The beginning elements of the list are generally more understood than the last elements (especially integration and consciousness).
  • ToastyMallows, on 10/10/2007, -4/+3Awesome artical, great read. Yea, thinking about "What Is Consciousness" definatly makes you have a "total mind *****" experience, thanks tblasko, couldn't have put it better myself.
    • dronkmunk, on 10/10/2007, -2/+0article
      • HairyFotr, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1If that's the only mistake you see in his comment, the joke is on you.
        Perfect english spelling and grammar is not necessary on the internet - not everyone who uses it had a good english education, but that doesn't mean they can't contribute something to the debate.
        (I'm talking in general here, that comment in particular doesn't really add anything new to the debate.)
  • esbern1, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7digg for this article having nothing to do with videogames, movies, music or celebrities.
    • SomaSynth, on 10/10/2007, -3/+110 Unsolved Mysteries of The Paris Hilton Brain. There, now it's Digg worthy.
      • HairyFotr, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Good luck finding that amount of data on something so elusive.
    • cusoman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Or religion.
  • MasterThief117, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1How about "The 10 Unsolved Mysteries of a Digger"
  • skjalff, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5saccadic motion of human eye can be as fast as a few thousand degrees a second. thats way past what you can visually perceive. No wonder you don't see your eyes moving while looking in the mirror. Incidentally, the only way to make your eyes move smoothly instead of "jumping" is to give them something to follow. The really brilliant faculty of the brain is being able to take all the visual snapshots that we take and feed them to the consciousness as a coherent whole. Good article btw.
  • omnirusa, on 10/10/2007, -2/+16Normal people submit the first page.
    • AAEXP, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4As if the typical digger is even close to normal! This is probably what happens when a normal person submits to digg!
    • rlee0001, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2The part of the brain that keeps track of what page you are on...
  • NeonNinja, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Great article. Being an avid reader in the topic of learning & memory, I found it nicely packed with information for the size. And, indeed, quite trippy to think about. Amazing how perhaps the biggest question left on this planet, IMHO, is inside our own skulls.
  • psygnisfive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Suggested reading:

    Phantoms in the Brain by V. S. Ramachandran
    Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett
    On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

    These people, I think, are on the right path of inquiry. Their ideas actually provide a very good place to start when it comes to answering many of those questions.
  • ericthesalmon, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Once we unlock the Secrets of the Human Brain, we can get Centauri Ecology or Ethical Calculus for free.
  • brycelb, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1Until they can tell me why ugly chicks look good when your drunk, im not listening!
  • noumuon, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2there's something about quite a few of those that seems as if the answer is already right in front of us.
  • TeMerc, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10Having a wife with brain damage from axonal brain shear due to a car wreck, this article is great info me.

    With the recent brain implants mentioned in the article, it gives me some hope that some day she may be fully back to normal.
  • JQP123, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3"We don’t have a theory yet of how to do this; we don’t even know what the theory will look like."

    Basically, we have no clue how "intelligence" really works. So why do so many have "faith" that we're on the verge of creating real artificial intelligence? It's like a geek religion --- a widely held view with limited basis in reality.
  • pyroh, on 10/10/2007, -0/+210 unsolved mysteries of why people keep posting lists
    • quarkfactor, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2The human brain likes organizing things in lists.
    • allengeer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Its actually the name of Eagleman's book too.
  • badmephisto, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Excellent article. We need more articles like this, and less articles about Paris. I wish I could digg this twice.
  • kelway, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Could be worth a try:

    "If I give you all the Tinkertoys in the world and tell you to hook them up so that they form a conscious machine, good luck. "
  • nicejai, on 10/10/2007, -6/+11. How is information coded in neural activity?
    This one is pretty much solved. Information is coded in the connections. I'd like to go into more detail, but it requires a little bit of math.

    2. How are memories stored and retrieved?
    Should look up Boltzmann machines and Hopfield nets. These are currently the most biologically viable models of not only how memories are stored, but more importantly, how they're retrieved.

    4. How do brains simulate the future?
    Neural nets are basically huge-ass inference machines. The more frequently neurons are stimulated, the stronger the connections grow. If a partial set of neurons are stimulated, there is a high likelihood they will still trigger the same neurons that will 'fill in the blanks', as a direct result of the learned correlations. For example, if the human experience of a ball being thrown at the ground is repeatedly correlated with the observation that it bounces back up, the connections between "ball thrown at ground" and "ball bouncing back up" will be very strong, and hence strongly correlated. If the neurons for "ball thrown at ground" are stimulated (by watching a basketball for eg.), then they will trigger the activation of the neurons for "ball bouncing back up". This is the basis for neural net prediction, and even the most basic of neural net models do this very well. Experience (large data sets) is king when it comes to prediction.

    5. What are emotions?
    Not sure about this one.

    6. What is intelligence?
    Some would argue that it's the ability to group/classify similar things together. This may be why most IQ tests are based upon recognizing patterns, and applying analogies. Artificial neural nets do this pretty well, hence the term artificial intelligence! =)

    7. How is time represented in the brain?
    What is time? =/

    8. Why do brains sleep and dream?
    Some researchers believe that the purpose of dreaming is to introduce "noise" to your neurons. By dreaming, your brain would create a positive feedback loop of images. By introducing noise into this process, only the truly important "signals" (experiences) would be stored. The random "noise" that's introduced would be created by neurons randomly firing off signals, since they're not being stimulated by signals from the five senses. This neural "noise" has the effect of deforming images that are created in this positive feedback loop that is your dream. This has the effect of dreaming of things that don't seem as they would appear in real life.
    Now what's the point of all this?
    Some would say that when you wake up and remember your dream, you look around and notice that reality isn't as weird as in your dream. Your brain automatically takes this and corrects its own understanding of reality.
    Check out http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/stories/dream.html for a better explanation.

    9. How do the specialized systems of the brain integrate with one another?
    I would guess with inter-connecting neurons.

    10. What is consciousness?
    Not sure about this one yet.
    • JQP123, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1"6. What is intelligence?
      Some would argue that it's the ability to group/classify similar things together. This may be why most IQ tests are based upon recognizing patterns, and applying analogies. Artificial neural nets do this pretty well, hence the term artificial intelligence! =)"

      Classification is only half the test. Of equal or greater significance is the ability to accurately comprehend a question that has never been seen before, adapt accordingly and make decisions. Modern artifical neural nets are pretty bad at this. Both the question and the answer algorithm must be translated into a long sequence of rote binary logic instructions. Like all computer software, a neural net simply reflects the intelligence of the programmer. Regardless of how big or sophisticated the net may be, it's still just binary logic being blindly replayed by a transistor based machine with an "intelligence quotient" of zero.
  • tnatharik, on 10/10/2007, -0/+211th Unsolved, The Page 3 Effect
  • kinerry, on 10/10/2007, -3/+18. Why do brains sleep and dream?
    Organization of data received throughout your waking hours. No sleep = no cataloging of new experiences = overload = death
    • transcendz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1That can explain some "regular" dreams, not all of them. Some dreams can be completely disconnected with what you've been doing during the past hours or days.
  • samchance, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Have you seen the webpage of Dr. David Eagleman, the author of the article? Incredibly interesting research going on in his lab, including whether time really goes into slow motion when people are in a life-threatening situation... http://neuro.bcm.edu/eagleman
    • allengeer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I actually took Eagleman's class in college. Pretty interesting class, although I have to say he was pretty arrogant about his field and its place in regards to other sciences.
  • Caleb83, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1Why the ***** did you link us to the third page
    • HairyFotr, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Why are you the third person that points this out. Also, what about it is such a big deal you really needed to say *****?
    • transcendz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1That's related to point 6.
  • prcrimm1, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0So at the end of the day, we still do not know jack.
  • bobthebruce123, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I remembered this:

    http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-19990501-000013.html

    Not the best article on the subject, but it's another piece of the equation which wasn't even touched on in this article.
  • tejohnst, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3What about MIND BULLETS! THATS TELEKINESIS, KYLE!
  • superguysteve, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1How bout the power to kill a yak...from 200 yards away. That do anything for ya?
  • Ascendancy5, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Clicking page 1 shows you #1 immediately? Hmm, good choice of layout here... And did anybody else feel like they are an idiot trying to understand some of this?
  • DeadFly, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1After reading that... what do we know about the brain?
  • GregLoire, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I majored in psychology in college, hoping to learn the answers to these questions. But really, the major just teaches the questions themselves more than anything else. An article like this should've been required reading when I entered the major so I could've picked something else instead.

    (Well, maybe not... then I might've had to actually study and learn stuff to graduate.)
  • BuffkinAhmad, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I hate the actor and audience business. An author should be in among the crowd, kicking their shins or cheering them on to some mischief or merriment.
  •  

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