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Week 11 [11.06-17.06.2018] The Master and His Emissary – The Divided Brain

Overall, what we as a species know about ourselves is limited. It is possible to say, that we are limited by our current mental capacities, or in other words – our brains. In fact, the brain is an organ that is not wholly understood. Iain McGilchrist, a renowned psychiatrist tackles the common misconceptions concerning the division of brain into hemispheres and introduces new ideas concerning their functions.



1. Did you find the presentation interesting? What was the most interesting part?
2. Do you think McGilchrist’s findings will change the way people perceive the functions of the brain?
3. Do you think that in the future we will be able to improve our brains?

Comments

Unknown said…
The presentation was very interesting for me, especially the part where the speaker debunked the common misconceptions about task division of the left and right brain.
Frankly, I don't think McGilchrist's findings will affect broad range of people, because people really don't care about the way their brains really work or about science in general.
I think we will be able to improve our brains, we try to do this all the time.
Unknown said…
Thank you for the first comment. I think that a lot of truth is that most people are not interested in brain activity. It is possible that in the future techniques will be developed that will enable us to stimulate the brain and make better use of it - for example, faster language learning.
Anna Koca said…
1. Did you find the presentation interesting? What was the most interesting part?
I think that the part about hemispheres was very interesting. However, I already knew before that we used only some percent of our brain and that brain is the organ that is responsible for our possibilities.

2. Do you think McGilchrist’s findings will change the way people perceive the functions of the brain?
They are very fresh and creative, however I don't know if they are enough game-changing in order to change people's view of how the brain functions. Also, I do not know if regular people are very much interested in that kinds of subjects.

3. Do you think that in the future we will be able to improve our brains?
I think technology is growing so rapidly that we would be able to implement some kinds of enhancements to our brains that will stabilize our emotions, stir our brain activity and neural transmissions and so on.
Unknown said…
Thanks for your comment. I also think that the most interesting information from the video is the part about hemispheres. I think ordinary people will become interested in the operation of the brain only when knowledge in this field will bring measurable benefits.
Unknown said…
Thanks for your comment. As you write, brain research is very complicated because the brain is a very complex organ. According to many estimates, the human brain contains around 100 billion neurons.
Unknown said…
1. Did you find the presentation interesting? What was the most interesting part?
I didn't like the presentations' visuals and the voice for me is badly recorded for this type of video. It's hard to focus on the topic by itself.

2. Do you think McGilchrist’s findings will change the way people perceive the functions of the brain?
Maybe, I'm not the guy, that is good in foresightedness in biological topics. But it's still one of the most mysterious topics in science.

3. Do you think that in the future we will be able to improve our brains?
Definitely yes, but not only by the mental exercises but mainly with the help of the technology.
Unknown said…
Thank you for your comment. I did not notice any flaw in sound quality until you mentioned it. Now that I've seen the video again, I hear the reverberation.
Patryk Górski said…
1. Did you find the presentation interesting? What was the most interesting part?

I think that this presentation itself is interesting, but the main problem is in sound - I think that the voice quality was quite bad.

2. Do you think McGilchrist’s findings will change the way people perceive the functions of the brain?

I don't know. Those kind of things are not in my "interesting things" list, so it's hard for me to predict things like that.

3. Do you think that in the future we will be able to improve our brains?

Yes. I think that people do evolve, we are learning a lot of new things every day and we can pass it for the future
Unknown said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said…
Thank you for your comment. I hope that despite the not-so-good quality, the video listened well and it did not bother to receive the content so much.
Certainly, once technology will become so much so that we will be able to improve our brains. Maybe we will live to a time when such a technological breakthrough will occur.
Unknown said…
In fact I haven’t find this presentation interesting. Everything, what’s said is only about theoretical things. Knowledge that one part of my brain is responsible for sth, and the other one for sth different really change nothing in my life. Of course it could be important if, f.ex. I’ll have head injury: if it will change sth in my personality I would like to know what depends on damaged part of my brain, but without it… that doesn’t matter.
In my opinion that findings don’t change anything in the people way of thinking in the next few years. People, like me, don’t care about the way their brains work.
We are improving our brains right now: what’s the difference if we storage knowledge inside our head or in our computers? In the future, if we will be able to connect with our smartphones with sth placed inside our heads… that will be improvement.
Unknown said…
Thanks for your comment. Of course, for ordinary people such information is irrelevant, but exploring the brain can allow scientists to do what you wrote, keeping information on others in storage media.
Wojtek Protasik said…
The whole talk was fascinating. It's nice to know that brain is not divided as simply as I was once told. It's amazing to what kind of conclusions this can lead when you analyze it. The fact that our society is reflecting a particular way of thinking and is less supportive for the other is true and also astonishing when you hear it during the talk.

He got my attention. I don't know how could we react to this actually but I think it's important to be aware our brain is not so primitively divided as they usually teach us.

Maybe. I think medical improvements or rather avoiding and/or healing mental diseases will be at the first plan but then we will see.
Unknown said…
Thank you for your comment. I have also been surprised by some fragments, because the common knowledge in this area is quite poor and based on many myths. I also think that at least a minimum should be understood how the human body and brain work.

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