BRAIN AND BEHAVIOR

        What can you and they do about it?

Over the past century, it has begun increasingly to look as if the heart of the matter might be ... the brain, as Emily Dickinson suggested nearly one hundred and fifty years ago. Or, more properly, that the heart of the matter might be the nervous system, of which the brain is a part.

Is it possible that everything that one is, does, and experiences is a function of the brain? that one is who one is because of what one's brain is? that becoming something different means changing the brain? And, if so, what are the implications of this? Do we lose something, or is the brain actually big enough, as Dickinson suggested, to contain everything? If so, what might we be able to do that has never before been possible? What are the risks, the gains, the new landscapes which would be opened to explore?

The interactive exhibits and other materials collected here are intended to make it possible for you to share some of the kinds of experiences which suggest that indeed the nervous system may be the heart of the matter. And to think with us about their implications, and the new questions they raise. Have some experiences, think about them, let us and others know what new thoughts and questions occur in your mind (brain?) in our Forum area, so we can all think together about these issues.

Interactive Exhibits

• Time to Think?: Is brain = behavior?
  an experiment using reaction times, with capability of doing your own research, requires Shockwave plugin

• Pattern Detection and Serendipity :
  Can you find Serendip?
  a game with different searching strategies, uses CGI programing

• Competition and Cooperation,
  aka Prisoners' Dilemma:
  Cooperate or compete?
  a game studied by people in a variety of disciplines, including biology, sociology and public policy, uses CGI programing

• Blindsight: Seeing What You Don't See: Do you need to know you saw it to have seen it? a blindsight experiment, requires Java capable browser

• Seeing More Than Your Eye Does:
  Does your brain make up stories?
  a "blindspot" experiment

• Seeing More Than Your Eye Does, continued
  Map your own blindspot (Java applet, requires Internet Explorer)

• Tricks of the Eyes, Wisdom of the Brain:
  Does your brain throw things away?
  a lateral inhibition network experiment, with optical illusions, requires Java capable browser

• Simple Networks, Simple Rules: Learning and Creating Categories:
  Can simple things learn?
  an experiment with a perceptron learning algorithm, requires Java capable browser

• The Free Will Problem:
  Can you control what you do?
  an experiment with ambiguous figures

• Remember the Source:
  How is your memory?
  an experiment in human cognition and memory, requires Flash 6 plug-in

Exhibits Under Development

• Comparative brain organization

• Ambiguous Figures

The Brain is deeper than the sea -
For - hold them - Blue to Bue -
The one the other will absorb -
As sponges - Buckets - do

The Brain is just the weight of God -
For - Heft them - Pound for Pound -
And they will differ - if they do -
As syllable from Sound -

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Resources

• Serendip, Brain, and Behavior - an article on a neural uncertainty principle, published in The Encyclopedia of Human Behavior, Volume 4
  (V.S. Ramachandran, editor), Academic Press, 1994 (pp 447-458)

• Genes, Brains, Behavior - resources and discussion

• Mind and Body: René Descartes to William James - an exhibit by Robert Wozniak

• Brain Matters, A question and answer forum for K-12 students

• Neurobiology and Behavior: A course and a conversation - Biology 202 at Bryn Mawr College

• Multiple reviews of Descartes' Error, by Antonio Damasio I began writing this book to propose that reason may not be as pure as most of us think it is or wish it were, that emotion and feelings may not be intruders in the bastion of reason at all: they may be enmeshed in its networks, for worse and for better.

Notes for Talks

• Parallel Changes in Thinking About the Brain and About Education
• Genes, Networks, Behavior, and Beyond: Thinking Backwards About the Brain and Education
• Brain Size and Evolution

Germinal Zones (places to look in search of new insights into brain and behavior)

• Brain and Behavior: Index of Topics
• Buddhist Meditation and Personal Construct Psychology
• The Gift of Saturn - Creativity and Psychopathology
• Music, The Brain, and Ecstacy, by Robert Jourdain (a book review)
• Exploring the Consciousness Problem: - a course and resource base
• Mental Health, an evolving resource base
• The "Nature" of Desire, a senior thesis on the neurobiology of love by Rachel Berman BMC '01
• Measure for Measure: An Artistic Exploration of Eating Disorders, Body Image, and the Self, by Janna Stern

Additional Resources Elsewhere

• Neurobiology at Serendip
• National Insitutes of Mental Health has excellent online booklets on a variety of topics including Learning Disabilities, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
• Neuroscience for Kids, a nice set of activities and resources