The Strange Workings of

the Brain
 Outline
Phobias
Phantom Limbs
Prosopagnosia and the Capgras Delusion
Synesthesia
Memory
Consciousness
 Phobias

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta-FGE7QELQ
 Phantom Limbs
Sensation that missing limb is still present
Often painful
Can sometimes be controlled, sometimes act on
their own accord
Not necessarily the same as missing limb
Missing arm felt 6 inches too short
Related to mapping of body onto brain
Mirror treatment
Cortical Homonculus
 Phantom Limbs
Sensation that missing limb is still present
Often painful
Can sometimes be controlled, sometimes act on
their own accord
Not necessarily the same as missing limb
Missing arm felt 6 inches too short
Related to mapping of body onto brain
Mirror treatment provides visual feedback
Mirror Box Treatment
 Prosopagnosia and the Capgras
Delusion
Prosopagnosia: inability to recognize faces
Can follow from traumatic brain injury
Usually associated with damage to fusiform gyrus (part of
temporal lobe)
Different forms:
Apperceptive: severe, cant even tell gender of person,
faces make no sense
Associative: cant make links between face and person
Subject may have emotional response without
conscious recognition
 Prosopagnosia and the Capgras
Delusion
Capgras Delusion: person holds a delusion that
a friend, spouse, parent, etc. has been replaced
by an identical-looking impostor
Thought to be like reverse of Prosopagnosia
Conscious ability to recognize faces, but without
automatic emotional response
Can be caused by traumatic brain injury
Possibly due to disconnection between temporal
cortex (facial recognition) and limbic system
(emotions)
 Neurological condition in which stimulation in
one cognitive pathway causes stimulation in
another

Examples:
Symbol --> color or spatial location
Sound --> color
Symbol --> personality
 Ts are generally crabbed, ungenerous
creatures. U is a soulless sort of thing. 4 is
honest, but 3 I cannot trust 9 is dark, a
gentleman, tall and graceful, but politic under
his suavity
Can test for synesthia
1 in 23 people have mild synesthesia
Likely due to cross activation of different brain
regions
Testing for Synesthesia
 Ts are generally crabbed, ungenerous
creatures. U is a soulless sort of thing. 4 is
honest, but 3 I cannot trust 9 is dark, a
gentleman, tall and graceful, but politic under
his suavity
Can test for synesthia
1 in 23 people have mild synesthesia
Likely due to cross activation of different brain
regions
 Synesthesia can be beneficial to those effected
Can aid memory well see this in a bit
Many artists have synesthesia
Synesthetes are truly gods among men
Famous Synesthetes include: John Mayer, Pharell
and Eddie Van Halen!!!
Some think that synesthesia can be related to
the development of language
Kiki or Booba?
 Memory
Impressive capacities for memory:
Solomon Shereshevsky
Russian dude active in the early 20th c.
Could reproduce incredibly long lists of sounds, words,
formulas, etc. without error after indefinite amounts of time
Diagnosed with 5-fold synesthesia
Music color, touch taste, etc.
Would memorize things by placing them in imaginary
landscape
Might forget something if he couldnt find it in this landscape
 Memory
Impressive capacities for memory:
Shass Pollak: Jewish mnemonists who memorized
more than 5,000 pages of 12 books of Babylonian
Talmud
A pin would be placed on a word, let us say, the
fourth word in line eight; the memory sharp would
then be asked what word is in the same spot on
page thirty-eight or fifty or any other page; the pin
would be pressed through the volume until it
reached page thirty eight or page fifty or any other
page designated; the memory sharp would then
mention the word and it was found invariably correct.
 Memory Disorders
Henry Gustav Molaison (H.M.)
Anterograde amnesia: cant form new memories
Bad epilepsy brain surgery, removed parts of medial temporal lobes
Lost ability to form new long term memories
Could still learn new motor memories, but wouldnt remember having learned them
K.C.
Intact semantic memory, no episodic memory
unable to describe an event that took place in school that specifically included him;
however, he knows that he went to school, and he retains the knowledge that he gained
there
Clive Wearing
Memento syndrome as result of Herpes simplex
Waking up every 20 seconds
8:31 AM: Now I am really, completely awake.
9:06 AM: Now I am perfectly, overwhelmingly awake.
9:34 AM: Now I am superlatively, actually awake.
 Consciousness
Physical theory for consciousness
Some argue that consciousness must be a quantum
phenomenon
Orchestrated Object Reduction (Orch-OR)
Formulated by Roger Penrose and an
anesthesiologist
Godels theorem brain can go beyond
axioms/algorithms
Theorem relates to un-provable-ness of theorms
 Consciousness
More Penrose
For non-algorithmic physics, look to quantum theory
Collapse of wave function is probabilistic
states are proposed to be selected by a 'non-
computable' influence embedded in the fundamental
level of spacetime geometry at the Planck scale.
Plato: pure values and forms exist in abstract realm
Penrose: this realm is the Planck scale
Suggests that brain contains these isolated quantum
systems possibly in microtubules inside neurons
THE END