Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

mcchen's picture

I-function

 I feel that the notion "all brains are 'somewhat the same, somewhat different'" is very logical.  Brains of humans and animals act similarly in that they keep us breathing and our blood flowing but humans have the ability to express emotion to each other while there is an ongoing debate on animal feelings.  While I am a bit unsure about the I-function, it allows us to locate the "person" in the case of someone like Christopher Reeves.  I feel that the I-function gets rather complicated when applied to patients in a vegetative state because how are we supposed to detect whether or not they know where their presence lies.  For people without Christopher Reeves' condition, does this mean the I-function lies in our brain? Or is it throughout our body because we are aware of all the parts of our bodies and are experiencing them?  What confuses me is how we talked about the fact that an I-function is not necessary for behavior, so does this mean the I-function lies in a separate compartment than the rest of the nervous system?

Reply

To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
4 + 4 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.