Finished till the 2nd chapter

• Author gave a brief idea about brain and talking about the different parts of it
  • How the neurons connect and fire to relay signals and communicate things
  • A brain contains hundreds of billions of neurons at birth, and they diminish as we age
  • Right half of brain controls left half of the body, and vice versa
• There is a debate on how the brain works — modularity or holism
  • Modularity - each part of brain is configured for a certain function, and if that part is damaged we cant do that function at all
  • Holism - The brain functions as a whole holistic unit, and things can be done by different parts as per situations
• He gave some quite good studies on it
  • How natural smile and forced smiles differ, because they are triggered by different scenarios and a different set of signals or components works
    • When we smile naturally, there is no thinking and it happens all from sensory view, like seeing someone you know
    • While if someone tells you to smile, the thinking part of the brain functions and a completely different set of neurons are fired
  • There are parts in brain which are related to arithmetic — he gave an example of a person getting stroke in that part of the brain, he couldnt perform arithmetics but could understand numbers in general
    • There is also research that we have a numberline in our brain
• Chapter 2 was mainly focused on the modularity of the brain, but as per the author, the brain can be modular or holistic as per the situation
• He talked about Penfield mapping, which gives the solutions to phantom limbs
  • In the brain in the cerebral cortex, there are maps for each body organs — some might be big (fingers, lips — as they are more sensitive), some might be small (trunk — chest, back, abs etc)
  • And since these maps are next to each other, when a sensation happens in one of the part, it can effect the adjacent parts as well in the mappings
    • eg. the face and limbs are next to each other in the mapping, so if someone touches the face near cheeks, they feel sensation in their phantom limb fingers
      • This was initially tested with monkeys using electrodes in their brain, but the author tried it on humans in normal feel touch test
    • and once he published his research, he got a lot of people calling him saying they also feel this sensation in their phantom body parts
• He also told about Aristotelian and Galilean way of doing things
  • Aristotle used to just form theories from his observations and never used to validate them with experiments
  • While, Galileo was famous for doing experimenting and getting actual proof to back his claims