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In the meanwhile, though, see Course announcements for formal wrap up procedures, and be sure to leave one last thought here.

At the beginning of the course, you wrote about your reactions to the assertion that "Brain and behavior are the same thing; there isn't anything else". And we took a poll which showed 6 agreeing with the assertion, 15 disagreeing, and 7 uncertain. Go back and read your thoughts from the beginning of the semester, and then write about how your thoughts have changed or not changed since then, and why. Be sure to indicate whether you are currently in the "agree", "disagree", or "uncertain" camp and I'll put the final poll results when they're in on the course home page.

Thanks again for your participation in the course. It was enjoyable and productive for me, and I hope for you as well.

I have learned a lot about how the brain and nervous system works. I have also developed a strategy for thinking about the brain and its function. However, the most important lesson I learned this semester was actually a comment that Prof. Grobstein made at the end of class. The self is not only determined by genes and experience, as is often suggested. Rather, it is formed through a combination of genes, experience, dreams, and the choices the I-function makes. This concept of self is the best I have ever heard, and it is one of the best things I will take with me.

i am still confused about reality and the issues such as novelty and how they intersect. Vandana's questioning of death is intersting as well. can we explain the great light in near death experiences? some many question are still unanswered....

Going back and looking at my first posting, I agree with some of what I wrote but I now interpret it differently. I stated before that the brain "is the source of thoughts, moods, emotions, and behavior" we can add on to his genes, experience, and the I-function. Some of these things cannot be controlled while others we can choose. In the long run the statement made by Laura says a lot—"nothing effects the behavior directly except the brain". When we began the course I thought the notion of brain equals behavior was ridiculous, well maybe not ridiculous but difficult to grasp with the information I knew. We have learned a great deal regarding the brain and behavior and through experiments done in class (which were always fun) and experiments discussed in class, we have been able to see and experience the effects of behavior and the role the brain plays in our behavior.

I think what makes it difficult to grasp, and the issue that I had before was the terminology. With so many different words and phrases used for the brain I tend to get overwhelmed. At the beginning of the semester, I was pretty sure that brain did not equal behavior, now with everything that we learned in class I found I have changed my mind. I don’t know if this necessarily means that I am convinced but I do agree. As a math major the equation brain = behavior says a lot, it’s got to work both ways behavior must equal brain as well. I would probably have liked it better if we said that they were congruent, in other words these concepts agree and coincide. But that was before, when terminology got a hold of me.

I can confidently say that you have my vote on the yes side, brain=behavior. But we do still have a lot to learn—that never stops.

As I have mentioned in the last forum area, however, I cannot entirely agree with the idea that nothing but the brain equals the behavior. I have learned that the most of the seemingly mysterious behaviors can be explained in neurobiological concepts. Nevertheless, there is no way to diprove the idea of the supernaturals affecting someone's behavior. Being born and growing up in a culture that is strongly based on gods and devils, I don't think I can change my belief on this subject.

This semester I've learned a lot about how the nervous system functions to create our individual realities. I'm impressed, to say the least, by its complexity; I still find it amazing that my running for the telephone or cooking dinner is ultimately controlled by a myriad of salt water bags changing their permeabilities in my body. And that "the picture in our heads" has been largely fabricated by our brains. And that motion sickness is caused by an expectation/input discrepency...And that it is possible for amputees to experience phantom pains. The brain is no slouch. Even though the old wives tale that we only use 1/9 of our brains may be false, it seems to me that we must have more control over our lives than we realize. That's both encouraging and a bit of a burden. That means that what we ultimately do with our lives is soley our responsibility.

One thing I mentioned in my first forum entry was religion. I thought and still think that the brain = behavior conept must be hard to swallow for a devoutly religious person. We didn't talk much about this in class, although I think someone did mention it in a forum recently. Does anyone have any thoughts they might want to share?

P.S. I'm still skeptical about the sleep paralysis thing. I'm still waiting for it to happen to me....

LE

On the first statement, “Brain and behavior are the same thing.”, I disagree. As I said in the beginning of class, I believe that we simply do not understand the structural and chemical complexities of the brain well enough to explain human behavior, much less say that the brain equals behavior. It is more conceivable to me now than in the beginning that someday we might be able to explain all human behavior in terms of the brain. For one thing, the fact that the brain creates our reality from limited sensory input means that in some sense of the word our behavior is the result of our brain’s version of reality. But, ignoring that, my biggest problem with the brain=behavior hypothesis is the intrinsic variability function. I wish we had discussed this more because it strikes me as a too-easy explanation of variability of behavior, i.e. behavior that we cannot explain. The intrinsic variability hypothesis does provide a reasonable explanation for things like learning, problem solving, creativity, etc. Essentially the variability function explains why we cannot predict for any given individual of any species what behavior will occur in a given situation. It seeks to explain the Harvard Law of Animal Behavior. But what actually is this function? A box of “noise” that says that unpredictability is an inherent property of behavior and thus the brain? It is good to acknowledge the intrinsic variability of behavior. But until we can come up with something more substantial to explain variability of behavior (for example, in physics, uncertainty is quantified in the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle), I can’t agree that the brain equals behavior. If I have learned one thing in this course, it is that there are huge gaps in our understanding of the brain (i.e. how/why we sleep/dream, how we learn, how drugs work on the brain, and on and on).

Finally, I believe that the brain is greater than the sum of its parts. Neither the brain nor behavior can be explained simply by the workings of the brain’s discrete components: neurons, neurotransmitters, synapses, etc (even if we knew more about those components). There is “something more”. Can this something more be explained by an intrinsic variability function? Is that just a scientific way of saying “free will”, consciousness, or God? This class has raised many more questions than answers and has increased my skepticism about what we say we know about the brain. And I don’t believe we know enough to say that the brain=behavior. At least that’s what I “choose” to believe! Thanks for a great semester!

I really wish we had been able to get further along in the course, specifically towards consciousness. However, I did like learning about perception and the eye. I also enjoyed thinking about certain subjects(like music) in terms of central pattern generators and corollary discharge.

So, I guess this makes me a yes, but I reserve the right to change my mind if the proper evidence should happen to present itself sometime in the future.