Lecture Notes: The Human Brain by Nancy Camwisher

Course Introduction

• Course: 9.13 The Human Brain
• Prof: Nancy Camwisher
• Agenda for Today:
  • Brief 10-min story
  • Discuss why, how, and what of studying the human brain
  • Course mechanics, syllabus, and grades

Story of Bob: Key Themes and Lessons

Story Overview

• Bob's Incident: A medical situation with a close friend, Bob.
  • Bob stayed at Nancy's house; planned to drive to a conference next morning.
  • Found Bob unconscious after a crash in the morning.
  • Called 911; taken to ER.
  • Extensive testing revealed nothing initially.
  • Suggested brain scan due to Bob's long-term navigational issues.
  • Found a lime-sized tumor in Bob's brain impacting navigation skills.
  • Discovered through old lab scans that the tumor was slow-growing.
  • Underwent successful surgery; navigational skills did not recover post-surgery.

Themes Highlighted

1. Brain Organization and Specialization: Different parts of the brain do distinct things.
2. Specific Brain Function: Loss of specific mental abilities without affecting others.
3. Recovery and Brain Damage: Age and timing critical for recovery.
4. Methods in Neuroscience: Various approaches to understand the brain, including direct behavioral observations and brain imaging.

Interaction and Questions

• Spatial Abilities Impact: Immediate spatial orientation unaffected; broader navigational context lost.
• Recognition: Can recognize places but unable to navigate between them.
• Compensation: Uses GPS for navigation; struggles in new environments.

Why Study the Brain

1. Know Thyself: Understand the essence of who we are.
2. Limits of Human Knowledge: Empirical epistemology—evaluating the depth and scope of our understanding.
3. Advancing AI: Human brain as a model for creating advanced AI systems.
   • Deep Nets: Major advances in AI, yet limited compared to human cognition.
4. Greatest Intellectual Quest: Fundamental pursuit to understand the nature of the mind.

How We're Going to Study the Brain

• Multiple Levels: Ranges from molecular to whole-brain levels.
• Focus on the Mind: Understanding how mental functions arise from the brain.
• Methods: Psychophysics, Illusions, Neuropsychology, Functional MRI, EEG, etc.

Course Coverage and Structure

Key Topics

• Perception, Visual Recognition (faces, places, objects).
• Speech and language, music perception.
• Number cognition, social cognition (understanding others' minds).
• Brain networks, attention, awareness.
• Developmental aspects and extraordinary cases (like blindness).
• Modern methods and current research in neuroscience.

Key Goals and Objectives

1. Conceptual Understanding: Grasp big questions and theoretical stakes.
2. Methods Mastery: Learn strengths and limitations of different neuroscience methods.
3. Knowledge Application: Apply understanding to recognize and analyze new research.
4. Navigating Current Research: Develop ability to read and understand current scientific papers.

Grading and Assignments

• Midterm and Final Exams: 25% each.
• Regular Reading and Writing Assignments: Response to scientific papers, focus on understanding over memorization.
• Quizzes: Short regular checks to ensure ongoing comprehension.
• Long Written Assignment: Design a cognitive neuroscience experiment.

Note on Course Content: Some areas like motor control, subcortical functions, and decision-making will get less coverage.

Tips on Reading Scientific Papers

• Focus on Key Questions: Questions tackled, findings, interpretations.
• Navigate Methods and Results: Understand basic design and core findings, skip superfluous technical details if non-essential.
• Iterative Reading: Read title and abstract first, then find specific information to answer key questions.

Proceed with understanding cognitive functions, neurological methods, and keeping up with current research. Learning how to dissect and analyze real data and findings will be pivotal.

Next class: A brief intro to neuroanatomy followed by a brain dissection.