WHY BRAIN???????

Why do we and other animals have brain????

We may have answered this question many times in our life and most of us may have given the answer “to think”.  For all those who have a misconception of our great brain I request them to watch the talk “The real reason for brains” by Daniel Wolpert. Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert starts from a surprising premise: the brain evolved, not to think or feel, but to control movement. In this entertaining, data-rich talk he gives us a glimpse into how the brain creates the grace and agility of human motion. Have you heard of sea squirt???? This aquatic organism after its juvenile life, will implant on to rock and digest its brain and nervous system!!!!!! This gives the evidence that no animal in this world need brain if it don’t have movements!!!! We keep memories and we think, just because they aid future movements. We don’t remember every single thing happened in childhood just because they don’t aid our future movements. When we send a command, muscles contract, our body moves we get a sensory feedback from vision, from signals and muscles. But these signals are not beautiful in the way we expect due to noise. In neuroscience noise is something that interrupt signal. Bayesian decision theory deals with how brain deals with these uncertainties. Speaker has gone through many interesting examples and illustrations to clarify his observations. Do watch the talk in the link given below.

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_wolpert_the_real_reason_for_brains.html

“Science versus Wonder” by Robert Ince was the next talk that I saw. To be very frank this was not so interesting as the other talks. I couldn’t grab much from the talk. If interested do watch the talk in the link given here.

http://www.ted.com/talks/robin_ince_science_versus_wonder.html

Cancer is nowadays, the most threatening disease and is unfortunate that there is effective drug against cancer in the world!! At Jay Bradner's lab, they found a molecule, JQ1 -- a magical molecule and when collaborated with leukemia cells the cells began to appear like ordinary white blood cells. But this is not a pill yet. Instead of patenting JQ1, they published their findings and mailed samples to 40 other labs to work on. An inspiring look at the open-source future of medical research.  

http://www.ted.com/talks/jay_bradner_open_source_cancer_research.html