Summary Of Secrets Of The Brain By Carl Zimmer

In 2014, the article “Secrets of The Brain” by Carl Zimmer was published in National Geographic. I am grateful I chose to study this article about the brain because it is simply mind blowing. Our brain is far more complicated then we put it out to be. Our knowledge is extremely limited and there is much work to do. Carl Zimmer lays out some of the knowledge that we do have about the brain but he mostly covered what we do not know and what scientists are working to understand. We as humans did not even begin to develop a real understanding of the brain until the 17th century. An anatomist named Thomas Willis discovered that the mushy blob of fat in our heads is not pointless, but the realm of our mental world.

A few years ago, a scientist named
Clay Reid said that there are “ridiculously simple questions about the cortex (which is simply one part of the brain) that we can't answer at all.” We still do not understand all of the fundamentals of the brain. Fortunately, we do know that each part of the cortex corresponds to a particular part of the body, and scientists have been able to accomplish much with that knowledge. For example, A 43 year old woman named Cathy Hutchinson suffered from a massive stroke and was unable to move or speak. She was aware of her surroundings and communicated by moving her eyes. Scientists were able to develop an implant that was inserted into her skull. The implant was then plugged into a computer and her brain was able to communicate with her body. A program was linked to it that could interpret Hutchinson's signals and she was able to move a robotic arm with her brain signals. Much has been accomplished with the knowledge we do have. Imagine how much more we could do if we could fully map out the brain!