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TTC – Neuroscience of Everyday Life

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Description

You are your nervous system. This incredible network of cells is responsible for all the ideas, perceptions, moods, desires, and dreams that make you a living, sentient person. The general public has been aware of this for many centuries. However, no one was certain how it occurred.
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Currently, we can map the functioning of the brain and the rest of the nervous system in incredibly fine detail to explain how neurons, synapses, neurotransmitters, and other biological processes produce all of the experiences of daily life at every stage of life. This is made possible by the fascinating new field of neuroscience. Something really exciting is going on behind the scenes, whether it is the brain’s phenomenal development in adolescence, acquiring a skill, falling in love, understanding a joke, changing one’s mind, or even losing a name.

For instance, recent innovative studies have made it possible to explain events like these:

Decisions: Research into decision-making at the neuronal level reveals that our brain frequently chooses a course of action before we are aware of it. This appears to violate our feeling of free will.
You can forget your vehicle keys (information stored in the neocortex) yet still remember how to drive since memory is made up of several systems spread throughout the brain (a learned skill requiring the striatum and cerebellum).
Willpower is a quantitative quality that uses a limited amount of mental resources, similar to a muscle, and is more than just a metaphor. Even while everyone has a constant amount of willpower throughout their lives, it may be developed with exercise—again, much like a muscle.
Religion and spirituality: The capacity to reason about persons and motivations, the search for causes and consequences, and the use of language all appear to be mental abilities that are necessary for the establishment of organized religion. Mystical experiences can also be linked to particular brain functions.

The Neuroscience of Everyday Life is a series of 36 lectures that will open your eyes to how neurological processes create the familiar aspects of human existence. You will learn about how the brain functions under pressure, in love, while learning, while sleeping, while thinking, while hallucinating, and simply while looking around. The brain is less concerned with recording reality than it is with conjuring up illusions that help us survive in our surroundings.

Sam Wang, a well-known neurologist and professor at Princeton University, is also a best-selling book, public speaker, TV and radio pundit, and award-winning researcher. Anyone interested in learning how their own brain functions will find this course enjoyable thanks to Professor Wang’s perceptive and lighthearted teaching style. His captivating presentation also makes no assumptions about a prior knowledge of science.

True or False?

The majority of what we believe we know about our brains turns out to be incorrect, according to Professor Wang. He dispels these recurring fallacies while updating you on the most recent findings in the area:

We only use 10% of our brains at any one time, but yours is truly working at 100%! Self-help gurus have propagated the misconception that idle brain capacity is ineffective, yet examples of brain injury, which inevitably result in functional limitations, disprove it.
Mozart makes children smarter: While classical music may help you relax around a baby, it does nothing for the child. The best approach is to teach them to play an instrument later in life, as this does help with brain growth.
Males report experiencing mood swings equally as frequently as women do, according to studies, proving that women are moodier than men. Men and women, however, often have a greater memory for the mood changes in women.
As we become older, we lose brain cells: The brain is said to be special as an organ since it ceases producing new cells after birth. In fact, the brain continues to make new neurons in some areas throughout life. Age causes some brain shrinkage, but neurons continue to function.

Activate Your Brain!

The brain has frequently been compared to a computer, using roughly the same amount of power while idle. But this is a myth as well. The brain is a wonder of evolutionary makeshift, with layer upon layer of systems that began out with one function and were eventually accepted for something very different, in contrast to computers, which are conceptually simple in their design. The brain’s powerful reasoning center, which only recently developed, is able to override some of the brain’s oldest processes, such as the fight-or-flight reaction to danger.

In fact, a lot of what the brain accomplishes is unconscious to us. However, there are times when you can step in. Professor Wang gives the following advice to help your brain function at its best:

Use your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks, and you’ll see a noticeable improvement in your ability to maintain a health regimen. This improves a person’s ability to stick to a diet or exercise regimen.
Effective learning: Avoid cramming! Divide your study time over numerous sessions. This enables your brain to have time to assimilate what you’ve learnt, which dramatically improves your retention of knowledge with no more effort on your side.
Resetting your biological clock: Light, which alerts your brain to where it is in the day/night cycle, is the greatest cure for jet lag. Any travel between the United States and Europe would benefit from arriving in the afternoon to help you acclimate.
The best brain workout is actual activity, which can improve cognitive abilities that often decline with age, like memory and reaction time. Although it’s never too late to start, the benefit is greatest if you start being active in your middle years.

You Are the Research Subject

The Neuroscience of Everyday Life also offers light on the following occurrences, moving from processes that are just concealed to those that are completely mysterious:

Since prairie voles are monogamous, in contrast to the majority of other animals, they make an intriguing model for researching human mating. The neurotransmitters oxytocin and vasopressin regulate the expression of pair bonding, often known as love, in both them and us.
Laughter and smiles are two of humor’s emotional components that have a long history of serving as social cues. Brain scanners can pinpoint the location of the brief flash of understanding that happens when we “get” a joke as another characteristic.
Haunted houses: Carbon monoxide poisoning, a once-common issue in homes lit by gas, can cause the neurological symptoms that people have linked with haunted houses, such as the perception of an unseen presence. The decrease in gas illumination has resulted in a substantial reduction in reports of haunted dwellings.
Our conscious awareness only encompasses a small amount of the stimuli detected by our brains, acting as a spotlight on a small section of a flood of information. Experiments demonstrate that we frequently behave without realizing it on unconscious knowledge.

While studying physics as an undergraduate, Professor Wang explains that it was his fascination with consciousness, free will, and other big ideas that prompted him to change to a field he believes to be even more alive with the potential for scientific breakthroughs that will fundamentally alter our worldview.

Of course, neurology is that discipline. You have the opportunity to learn about a field that is currently experiencing its golden age through The Neuroscience of Everyday Life, with the benefit that the topic is not some distant concept.

You are it.

Health and Medical course

More information about Medical:

Medicine is the science and practice of establishing the diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and prevention of disease.
Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness.
Contemporary medicine applies biomedical sciences, biomedical research, genetics, and medical technology to diagnose, treat, and prevent injury and disease,
typically through pharmaceuticals or surgery, but also through therapies as diverse as psychotherapy, external splints and traction, medical devices, biologics, and ionizing radiation, amongst others.

Medicine has been around for thousands of years, during most of which it was an art (an area of skill and knowledge) frequently having connections to the religious and
philosophical beliefs of local culture. For example, a medicine man would apply herbs and say prayers for healing, or an ancient philosopher and physician would apply bloodletting according to the theories of humorism.
In recent centuries, since the advent of modern science, most medicine has become a combination of art and science (both basic and applied, under the umbrella of medical science).
While stitching technique for sutures is an art learned through practice, the knowledge of what happens at the cellular and molecular level in the tissues being stitched arises through science.

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