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Cayla McNally's picture

Vastness of the Brain

Submitted by Cayla McNally on Sun, 02/04/2007 - 9:56pm.

While I really enjoy this class, the vastness of the human nervous system makes me wonder what it can actually teach us, other than that the brain is far too complex to ever be minimally understood. Not only are there innumerable inputs and outputs that can occur in any given situation, there is no indication that there is any relation between them; that is, the same input repeated 3 times has the possibility of resulting in 3 completely different outputs. This is further complicated by the idea of “boxes all the way down,” especially due to the fact that no one knows what processes occur within the boxes, and how they affect the outputs. There are infinite combinations of inputs and outputs in the brain, which leads me to doubt that scientists will be able to do much more than scratch the surface when dealing with the functions of the brain.

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