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Student Blogger's picture

Hard To Define

I think that attempting to define behavior as the product of the brain is a good start in trying to understand the connection between brain and behavior. Behavior is based on many more influences than just brain activity, such as an individual's upbringing, the environment in which an individual chooses to surround themselves with, etc.

Although I agree with Dickinson's idea that the without the brain our surroundings would not exist, I feel as if her theory is incomplete. She does not go on to explain the actual mechanics of the brain, which is a critical component of understanding behavior. I believe that Francis Crick's hypothesis fills in the gaps that Dickinson failed to address, in that he uses the behavior of nerve cells to explain behavior. Decartes theory, that describes a spiritual element of the brain, is also true but the spirutual component is not so intangible. In the article "Is God in Our Genes", published in Time Magazine, it describes how some people have more of a capacity for spirituality than others and how a gene has been located in the human genome that codes for spirituality. I do not consider myself to be religious or spiritual by any means, so I find some truth and comfort in the fact that we can understand how some people are predisposed to being more spiritual than others.

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