brain and knowledge

wissenmachtschaft, 2006

the photo in blog 7 shows the facade of the swiss federal parliament building that is fenced with barbed wire. the title is also a wordplay.

writing about creativity in blog 6, i brought up many terms such as dopamine, emotion, intuition, reward system, luck, limbic system, “unconscious emotional center”, stress and learning.

seeing, sensing photographies and experiencing art is linked to processes in the brain. this inevitably calls upon us to learn more about these processes and to understand them.

as i announced in previous blogs, with each new blog i’m going to go deeper into the matter of brain, consciousness, unconsciousness and with that quantum physics.

our brain only weighs 1.4 kilograms, but it is our most complex organ with wisdom from 500 million years of evolution. it is always turned on, regulating and managing all of our bodily functions.

the brain consists of two halves (hemispheres) that are connected by the corpus callosum. it was believed that each hemisphere had its specific functions. however, recent research methods have shown both halves exchanging and complementing information, therefore working together. this leads to increased brain performance.

take music for an example, where the left half processes sound elements and the right half the “melody”. this results in music. details of a photograph are seen on the left, the whole image on the right.

we hence need to dissociate from the perception that logic originates from the left and emotion/creativity from the right. humans feel, think and act holistically through both hemispheres interchanging information.

the brain contains about 100 billion neurons (nerve cells, comparable to the number of stars on the milky way).

a neuron is a complex chemical plant, a microcosm. every nucleus of these neurons contains all 35’000 genes of the individual. each neuron is a specialist in a specific place, but always working in groups.

each neuron is connected to other neurons through up to 10,000 synapses. there are 60 trillion of these contact points = synapses in the cortex. it is on these synaptical clefts where the chemical transfer through neurotransmitters and neuromodulators takes place (e.g. with aid of the messenger dopamine as mentioned in the last blog).

new neurons and synapses are created during our whole life. they interconnect with each other. this process is called neuroplasticity and is very important for the learning process. decreased brain performance has nothing to do with age, but depends on training!

our experiencing, learning, behaving and with that our consciousness and our identity are based on this interconnectedness of neurons and their excitation patterns.

neurons are the atoms of perception and lead to consciousness and knowledge.

does knowledge create more power? how powerful is science? who leads and guides science, particularly on ethical paths?

sources: christof koch, norbert herschkowitz, klaus grawe