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Right off the bat I was struck by our conversation about shared subjectivity.  It had never occurred to me that the world as we perceive it is simply a subjective construction of reality.  I feel that this realization poses huge limitations/difficulties on the study of the brain.  For example, what does an fMRI really tell us if we all construct a slightly different reality?  This seems particularly problematic for comparing fMRI results from different subjects.  Another topic that I was intrigued by was the concept of gaining a function in response to a disability – in particular the possibility that this is due to inhibitory mechanisms.  The brain normally must inhibit a certain amount of stimuli, but some disabilities may turn off these inhibitory functions.  I found this particularly interesting in light of my thesis research (I was sick Monday so I did not get to talk about this in class).  My research studies the role of microRNAs in hematopoietic stem cells.  microRNAs function to repress gene expression posttranslationally by binding and inhibiting the translation of mRNAs.  Thus, they are essentially inhibitory mechanisms in cells.  microRNAs were only identified recently, but they have been found to be ubiquitous in the cell.  I am fascinated by the possibility that the body – both cells in the brain and elsewhere – may rely more on inhibitory mechanisms than activating mechanisms.  I was also interested in the idea of consciousness, and what possible neural mechanisms (or not) lead to consciousness.  This is always an intriguing yet frustrating question – because it seems impossible that the processes inside and between a group of cells can lead to consciousness.  Finally, I found myself concerned by our discussion of the process of research science and what material is taught in schools.  It seems inevitable that some voices may be “louder”, people will publish false or exaggerated data, and that we will teach concepts that are plain wrong in school.  However, what choice do we have?  We must attempt to progress and teach what we find particularly important and novel at the time.

My questions/future research:

1) I think that it is particularly important that we study the role of inhibitory mechanisms in the brain.  It may not seems as interesting at first – but it may be just as important to recognize what regions of the brain are not active during a particular task (like with fMRI) as what areas are.

2) Although this is hard to study, it would be intriguing to look further into consciousness.  Can we replicate consciousness in a machine?  Are animals/infants conscious?  Are there certain neural mechanisms that are essential to consciousness, while others can ablated while retaining consciousness?

3) Lastly, (although I wasn’t as struck by this conversation), I feel that it is important that we further characterize and explore depression because it is such a prevalent problem in our society.  What exactly is depression?  Is depression just a fad?  Should depressed people be medicated?  Is there an evolutionary benefit of depression?