The Behaving Brain Essay Example for Free

The Behaving Brain Essay The Video begins by explaining what we learned in class on Thursday about how the brain is made up of and how it works. It explained that a message will travel down axon then the message travels into the dendrites that release the message into the synapse. The brain becomes the most complex thing in the universe because it controls so many different things in the human body. It regulates our metabolism, temperature and respiration. It also enables us to learn, remember and decide. The video then moved on to talking about a new breed of scientists called neuroscientists. They are guided my the assumption that everything in the brain can be explained by biological or chemical events taking place within it either through out the entire brain or a region within. It went on to explain certain parts of the brain such as the brain stem, which controls life support in the body. The cerebellum that controls body movement and the limbic system which maintains the bodies inside workings and controls emotions. Ways of approaching the study of the brain is with brain imaging, which can provide researchers with actual pictures of the brains inner workings. The best way to study the brain is to record the brains electrical activity using a EEG machine. E. Roy John practices neurometrics. A way of recorded electrical activity of a patient and comparing it with a recording of normal brain activity. It enables you to see if any certain person has a mental or emotional disease such as depression or alcoholism. Some researchers study the brain chemically. Joseph Martinez focuses on chemicals that promote learning and memory. He tries to coax the brain to remember or in some cases forget things by introducing certain chemicals into the body. This research is being practiced in search for a cure for Alzheimers disease. The last section of the video was on a study of patients with Amnesia. Mieke Vertaellie works with patients in helping them recover and build new memories of which have been forgotten . Her patients are given word to remember to the best of there ability then try to recite what words they remembered. Patients with Amnesia usually can remember memories or information 10 years back but are unable to remember anything more recent. I found the research experiment Joseph Martinez was using with rats to be very interesting. Training a rat in maze to find food by following a certain track in the maze. After the rat had been trained to find the food Martinez introducing a chemical causing the rat to forget its training and wasnt able to find the food. I thought that was a great step in finding a cure for Alzheimers disease. But understanding the brain seems to be an ongoing and maybe never ending search to understand it. Its amazing to think a brain weighing 3 lbs is capable of being able to know more than any computer is a big thought to wrap your head around. I found the most interesting research in the video to be the chemical research. So much can be controlled with the chemicals in the brain. pain, happiness, depression, motor control is all controlled by the brain. Introducing more or less of a neurotransmitter can benefit humans in hundreds of ways.