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     Last week we spent a great deal of time discussing the topographic organization of the brain.  I’ll admit, a lot of the specific names and regions overwhelmed me at first because I tend to compartmentalize in terms of “left brain”/“right brain” function.  Then I read through some of the articles in the January 29th issue of TIME featuring a “User’s Guide to the Brain.”  While I appreciate what we’re trying to accomplish in class by asking elemental questions like “if behavior is different, are the brains different too?” I have to step back and consider the opening article in TIME which states “trying to map the brain has always been cartography for fools.”  How can we truly pin down something so inconsistent?  I would go nuts if I had to write a paper on a book that kept changing its format as I was reading it– how can these scientists see any progress when dealing with the ultimate in incomprehensible shape-shifters?

     Someone in class brought up one of the newer studies about thought having the power to alter the physical layout of brain matter – how does this lend itself to topographic continuity at all?  Sure, we are learning more and more about the nature of memory and trauma but will we ever be able to draw clear border lines around areas of the brain according to function?  Is this a futile effort and we should throw our hands up now or will technology progress so much that one day we will be able to predict the movement of brain matter before it happens, according to some breakthrough mapping system?  This actually hurts my brain, just thinking about the advances that will be needed in order to “read a mind.”  For now, the brain reminds me of Alsace-Lorraine during WWII – what identification do you slap on a territory that’s changed hands so many times?  Crazy stuff, the brain rewriting itself…