1. Introduction to the Human Brain

MIT OpenCourseWare

27 Oct 202179:56

EducationalLearning

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TLDRThis MIT lecture by neuroscientist Nancy Kanwisher provides an overview of studying the human brain to understand the mind. She shares key questions like why we should study the brain, methods used, recent progress mapping brain functions, course goals, and lecture topics. A story about her friend's brain tumor that impaired navigation illustrates specialized brain modules. Kanwisher argues the brain's structure mirrors the mind's architecture and surveys vision, language, emotion, theory of mind, and more. She previews reading scientific papers, designing experiments, debates on cortical organization, and the limitation of AI versus human cognition.

Takeaways

😀 The course will focus on how the brain gives rise to the mind, starting with mental functions and then examining their brain basis
🧠 There has been huge progress in mapping mental functions to brain regions using fMRI in the past 20 years
📈 AI systems are approaching but don't yet match human abilities in vision and cognition
🔬 The course will cover methods in human cognitive neuroscience and what they can reveal
👩‍🏫 Goals include appreciating big questions, gaining knowledge on cognition and the brain, and reading papers
📚 There will be no textbook; students will read original research articles
🗓️ Topics span from perception to social cognition, with unique human abilities later
🧠 A key question for each mental function is whether specialized brain machinery exists for it
📝 When reading papers, start by identifying the question, findings, interpretation and study design
😊 The amazing opportunity of a real brain dissection by Ann Graybiel will happen early on

Q & A

What is the main goal of the course?
-The main goal of the course is to understand how the human brain gives rise to the mind - focusing on mental functions where the brain bases are best understood, like visual perception, face recognition, navigation, understanding numbers and language.
What happened to Nancy Kanwisher's friend Bob that motivated parts of this course?
-Bob had a lime-sized brain tumor removed from next to his parahippocampal place area, which is involved in navigation. After surgery he was unable to navigate effectively anymore, showing the specificity of different brain regions.
What is the parahippocampal place area and what does it do?
-The parahippocampal place area (PPA) is a region of the brain discovered by Nancy Kanwisher's lab to be selectively involved in visual scene perception. It responds strongly to images of scenes but not other stimuli.
What revolutionized the field of AI in 2012?
-In 2012, the AlexNet deep neural network architecture developed by Alex Krizhevsky and others revolutionized the field of AI by approaching human-level performance on visual object recognition using deep convolutional neural networks trained on over 1 million images.
What is the main limitation of current AI systems compared to human intelligence?
-Current AI systems are excellent at pattern recognition but lack the ability that humans have to build rich conceptual models to deeply understand situations and apply flexible reasoning.
What percentage of the grade is from the midterm and final exam?
-The midterm exam is worth 25% of the grade and the final exam is worth 25% of the grade.
What special privilege are students getting regarding neuroanatomy?
-The amazing neuroscientist Ann Graybiel will be doing an actual human brain dissection in front of the class to give students direct exposure to real human brain anatomy.
What is meant by the term 'gobbledygook' when reading scientific papers?
-"Gobbledygook" refers to technical jargon details that are not important to understand for the purposes of this class, like MRI physics, scanning parameters, complex statistics, etc. These can be safely ignored while reading papers.
What aspects of cognition are unique to humans compared to other species?
-Higher cognitive abilities covered later in the course, like complex language, theory of mind, etc. are largely unique to humans compared to other species.
What publication date range is covered in the assigned research paper reading?
-The assigned research papers range from seminal early papers to very current papers published in the last 1-2 years to give a view of the cutting edge of the field.

Outlines

00:00

🧠 Opening Remarks and Lecture Overview

Kanwisher welcomes students to the class, outlines the agenda for the lecture, which includes telling a story about a friend's brain tumor to illustrate key themes related to specialized brain regions and recovery from brain damage. She then plans to discuss the rationale for studying the brain, methods used, and specific topics that will be covered in the course.

05:02

😱 A Friend's Scary Brain Tumor Discovery

Kanwisher shares a detailed story about her friend “Bob” who was discovered to have a slowly growing, lime-sized brain tumor after suddenly collapsing in her home. She relays his treatment process, including intricacies of the surgery, questions raised about the impact on his cognitive abilities, and assessments confirming permanent navigational deficits resulting from damage to nearby brain regions.

10:02

🧠 Reflecting on Major Themes Highlighted

Kanwisher reflects on major themes from the story, including that the brain has specialized structure and regions that serve discrete functions. She also notes the specificity of some systems, the brain-mind link, limits of human knowledge, AI advancement, and the use of different techniques to study the brain.

15:02

❓ Why Study the Human Brain?

Kanwisher outlines key reasons for studying the brain: self-understanding, evaluating human knowledge, advancing AI, and the fact that it's the greatest intellectual quest of all time.

20:10

🔬 Methods for Studying the Brain and Mind

Kanwisher discusses the need to understand the mind first when studying brain-mind links. She outlines methods from cognitive science and notes that exploring specialized brain machinery for functions will be a focus. Specific mental functions covered will concentrate on areas where neural bases are best understood.

25:11

📝 Course Logistics and Content Overview

Kanwisher provides admin details on course components like assignments, grading, goals, and the reasoning behind using primary literature instead of a textbook. She gives a high-level overview of the progression of topics, spanning perception to uniquely human capacities.

30:12

📄 How to Read and Digest Academic Papers

Kanwisher advises students on strategies for reading academic papers, including identifying the core question, findings, interpretation and experiment design. She notes important content is not always in order and suggests focusing on key questions.

35:13

🙂 Closing Remarks

Kanwisher wraps up the introductory lecture, asks for final questions, and prepares to cover neuroanatomy basics in the next class before an upcoming brain dissection demonstration by Professor Ann Graybiel.

Mindmap

Keywords

💡Human brain

The human brain is the focus of the video and course. It gives rise to the human mind and mental functions. Understanding how the brain works is considered the greatest intellectual quest of all time.

💡Functional MRI

Functional MRI is a key method used to study the brain basis of mental functions. It allows researchers to see which parts of the brain are active during different cognitive tasks.

💡Brain regions

The video discusses specialized brain regions that each perform specific mental functions, like face recognition, scene perception, etc. Mapping these regions is key to understanding the neurobiological basis of the mind.

💡Cognitive science

Cognitive science methods like psychophysics that study the mind are crucial first steps before examining the brain bases of mental functions.

💡Navigation

The video tells a story about a patient who lost his ability to navigate after brain damage. Scene perception and navigation in the brain will be covered in depth.

💡Development

The video will explore how mental functions and brain systems develop, what is present at birth versus learned, focusing on navigation and face recognition as examples.

💡Language

Understanding and producing language are uniquely human capacities that involve distinct brain regions. The relationship between language and thought will be examined.

💡Theory of mind

Theory of mind refers to the ability to attribute mental states to others. The video will cover the brain basis of how we think about and understand other people.

💡Deep nets

Deep nets in AI can be used as models for information processing in the human brain. A lecture will compare their capacities to human cognition.

💡Attention

Focused attention is a critical component of many mental processes. The brain basis of attention may be covered if time permits.

Highlights

The brain gives rise to the mind, so studying the brain's biology without considering mental functions misses the point

Studying the mind empirically evaluates the limits of human knowledge and our capacity to understand concepts

AI systems are approaching but don't yet match human visual and cognitive abilities

The course focuses on mapping mental functions like vision and language to specialized brain regions

FMRI has transformed our understanding of brain organization over the last 20 years

Students will read cutting-edge papers to learn how scientific discourse works

When reading papers, first identify the question, findings, interpretation and experiment design

Ignore MRI physics and other technical minutiae when reading neuroscience papers as a non-specialist

Legendary neuroscientist Ann Graybiel will conduct a real human brain dissection in class

Understanding numbers engages many methods like brain imaging, computation and animal behavior

Uniquely human mental abilities like language and empathy can't rely on animal models

Student projects will hone experiment design skills through formulating hypotheses and methods

The course explores open questions about plasticity, thought without language and unconscious processing

Navigation, face perception and number form an arc exploring methods and brain-mind links

Subcortical regions get short shrift due to the course's cortical focus

Transcripts

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