if you have a sheep-like smooth cortex, you should listen to Aristotle

especially when he says:

"...the brain is not responsible for any of the sensations at all. The correct view is that the seat and source of sensation is the region of the heart."

AND

"The seat of the soul and the control of voluntary movement-in fact, of nervous functions in general,-are to be sought in the heart. The brain is an organ of minor importance."


 



exhibit A



exhibit B

       A is NOT ≥ B!



However, I will cut poor Mr. Aristotle a break because the brain is only now becoming demystified. For example...

Einstein had it right!

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice."

So does Cahill et. al:

"Emotions give a more activated and chemically stimulated brain, which helps us recall things better."

                 (no but seriously, if you want something you learned to be retained for sure, find a way to make it emotionally relevant for yourself!)

As well as William F. Allman:

"The brain is a monstrous, beautiful mess. Its billions of nerve cells-called neurons-lie in a tangled web that displays cognitive powers far exceeding any of the silicon machines we have built to mimic it."

                 (however, neural networks are still important tools, duh!)

Susan Blakemore described how

"In proportion to our body mass, our brain is three times as large as that of our nearest relatives. This huge organ is dangerous and painful to give birth to, expensive to build and, in a resting human, uses about 20 per cent of the body's energy even though it is just 2 per cent of the body's weight. There must be some reason for all this evolutionary expense."

                  (except, since I don't think we are meeting the recipe for evolution any longer, what will become of this long-awaited masterpiece that is the human brain?)

And John R. Searle aptly said

"Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer."
        (in another century, or even another decade, I wonder how our technological advances and social and cultural ideas will be reflected in our knowledge of the brain)

          This also goes along with the following two quotes...

"The brain struggling to understand the brain is society trying to explain itself." Colin Blakemore (from Mechanics of the Mind, 1977)

                                              and

"If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't."
Lyall Watson

Another necessary reminder comes from Will Rogers

"You know you've got to exercise your brain just like your muscles."

Regardless, the point is: Out with the old-think, and in with the new 'cause our nervous systems control everything we do!