We often hear brains compared to computers. While these two systems share helpful similarities, however, we should remember that the analogy is imperfect. In fact, throughout history humans have a tendency of comparing the brain to… well, whatever the second-most complicated known thing in the world happens to be.
Thus brains used to be compared to intricate musical instruments of the middle ages, or showy hydraulic systems of 1600s France, for example. Go far enough back, however, and such comparisons become rarer as we venture into a time period when people didn’t even believe that the brain is responsible for thought.
For a long time, it was the heart, not the head, which was believed to be the locus of thinking. It makes sense: when your perceptions and emotions change, so often does your heart-rate, yet the brain just sits there, doing nothing. Aristotle believed that the brain was a kind of radiator, there to regulate the temperature of the blood.
Not until some rather gruesome experiments performed on a pig by the Roman physiologist Galen, studies of brain damage, and the discovery of electricity, did it begin to look to us as though the brain is where our thinking happens.
Yet to this day, we are still not quite sure just how localised thinking is to the brain, and to which particular regions. Are some parts of the brain responsible for certain kinds of brain activity? Perhaps, but the image is less clear than you may believe.
The history of our understanding of the human brain is a fascinating study, and I’m joined in this episode by Matthew Cobb, Emeritus professor of zoology at the University of Manchester, to explore it.
His book on the subject is The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience.
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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - The Heart or the Head?
4:13 - Medicine in the Ancient World
12:25 - Why Don’t We Accept Evidence?
17:09 - From Ancient to Modern Understanding
28:04 - When Did We Reach a Consensus on the Brain?
36:16 - Electricity in the Brain
38:33 - Our Metaphors for the Brain
42:50 - Is the Brain Segmented or Whole?
01:03:55 - Why is Speech Governed by the Left Hemisphere?
01:17:30 - Why is the Brain Split Into Two Hemispheres?
01:21:41 - Where in the Brain Does Consciousness Originate?
1:31:21 - The Robot Ladybug
1:33:43 - Back to Consciousness
01:44:02 - What is a Neuron?
01:54:38 - Why is Smell Connected to Memory So Strongly??
02:00:49 - Do London Cab Drivers Have Larger Hippocampi?
02:08:46 - The Limits of MRI and CT Scans
02:17:59 - Will We Ever Be Able to See Consciousness in the Brain?
