A Tour of my Brain

What's fascinating is that these two, seemingly independent, brain lobes work in such beautiful unison. The up/down regulation of neurotransmitters and agonist sensitivity to compensate for and mask illnesses is wildly interesting.

Also, I think I would've enjoyed learning, about biology specifically, a lot more had the subject matter been designed so awesomely. Dull presentation (text, structure, etc) can really have an effect on the way you view the content.

> For a long time, I thought my calling was in medicine. Sometimes, when I read about interesting new research in neroscience, I wonder what would have happened if I had continued studying medicine. Who knows?

I feel exactly the same way. Since taking an introductory biology class in school, I've always been extremely interested in biology and biotech in general. The fact that the possibilities in changing, improving, and modifying the human body, as well as other biology and even non-animate things (which ventures a bit into chemistry/physics) is very appealing.

I frequently read Wikipedia (probably a bit too much) on biology, specifically on things like medicine and psychoactives.

The fact that the human body can be infinitely modified is likewise infinitely amazing to me. Biotech and bioscience would certainly be my #2 after entrepreneurship, if I had another life.

Fantastic article and presentation, btw.

A couple of points for accuracy - the corpus callosum isn't the only path of communication between the two hemispheres of the brain. There are at least two minor pathways, unfortunately I can't remember either of their names well enough to find them and my neurology books are at home. The corpus callosum is by far the biggest pathway of communication, but studies where it has been split have shown that the minor pathways are also used for some communication.

And... while the left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body and vice versa, the eyes are a bit different. When you show something to one eye, the signals from the left side of the eye's visual field are sent to the right side of the brain, and the right side of the visual field _of the same eye_ are sent to the left hemisphere.

This makes studying people who've had the CC severed very awkward as you have to present images to one side of their visual field and then remove it before their eyes have moved to see the image with the whole field. In turn, this affects which images you can show as they have to be simple enough to be understood quickly enough that you only have to show them for a very limited time. Again, this is something I'd need to look up in my old university notes or textbooks but I have a feeling it was something like 22ms - it could well have been a bit longer, but it's a very, very short time.

I too love neurology and studied Experimental Psychology at university, now a bundle of years ago, and we covered a chunk of neurology in that. One of my lecturers, Alan Parkin, had studied people with split brain and some with alien hand syndrome. His books are well worth a read if you're interested in neuropsychology, but you might find them a bit heavy if you haven't already read around psychology, they're made for 2nd-3rd year undergraduate students.

How is this related to Erlang??

I wish it was standard practice to give patients access to this kind of awesome stuff.

I hate being a pedantic dick about these kinds of things, but Fourier is spelled with a capital F because it's a proper noun. (It's the name of a badass French mathematician. Lagrange is another example, as is Cauchy.)

Aside from that, though, I actually learned a tiny bit of neuroanatomy and a little bit about neuropathology, which is always a plus.

Mmmm, NeoTech. One of the biggest reasons I wish @font-face was better supported.

I've always thought that even with the most idiotic person, if their brain could be plugged into a computer, it'd be beyond that of any supercomputer. Anyone wish to elaborate?

Ow! White on black burns my retinas. (No, I'm not Mort from Family Guy).