NEW FRONTIERS IN NEUROSCIENCE

 

Science is touching new frontiers,  especially the Neuroscience.

I came across  an article giving vivid account of  how the  brain  responds to decisions.  It is a new discipline called ''Neuroeconomics'' which explains human decision making - the ability to process multiple alternatives and how to follow a course of action.

Scientists  predict that if you tend to splurge, it means you are right-brain oriented.  Right brain thinkers, they say, hate to plan and succumb to impulse much more.

When you see a new dress,  lovely shoe/ jewellery  you get excited thereby light up a ''pleasure centre'' of your brain called ''Nucleus Accumbens '' which  secretes neuro-chemical called dopamine.

In fact, we are shrouded with so many mysteries on human brain.   After  successful completion of  ''Human Genome Project'',  America now  started another equally marvelous project called  BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Technologies Initiative.  The European Union also established ''Human Brain Project which is a 10 year scientific research project to better understand the brain and how it functions.

The objective of US's Brain Research Project is better reflected in  these words of the then US President Barack Obama "There is this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked.  And the brain initiative will change that by giving scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain in action and better understand how we think and how we learn and how we remember.  And that knowledge could be- will be - transformative''.

Human brain is the most complex organ in the universe.  With 86 billion neurons along with other cells, it  make more than 100 trillion connections.

Scientists  are  trying to map the circuits of the brain, measure the fluctuating patterns of electrical and chemical activity and understand how their interplay creates unique cognitive and behavioral capabilities.

Scientists say that 60 years of studying one neuron at a time has taught a lot about individual neurons, but that is not sufficient.

Most of us assume that the physical location of the  brain is head.  But the fact is  that your head is only the ''command centre'' where as each cell has its own brain.

The scientists are struggling  with what the phenomena called ''Hard Problem'' -  when a person sees a red rose and if his brain is put under fMRI,  nothing of such sort like  rose is seen in his brain.  Further, they also fail to decipher how  the brain creates subjective experience called 'qualia''.  

 

Let these haunting questions invigorate our scientific community to  dig deeper into the mysteries of Universe !