Tractatus Analogico-Mythologicus
What indeed?
My research is on cognitive-emotional interaction, so I suppose I am qualified to answer this question. 🙂
But my answer cannot be the answer, since there is actually no consensus among scientists concerning the definition of emotions.
[Illustration of grief from Charles Darwin’s book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.]
Do excitatory and inhibitory neurons make binary logic in the brain?
Not really. But it’s a good question because we learn a lot when we try to answer it.
First, we have to clarify what the words ‘excitatory’ and ‘inhibitory’ mean.
So the statement “If some neurons are excitatory meaning they will fire and some inhibitory meaning they won’t” is not quite right. All neurons, whether excitatory or inhibitory, can fire, but only if they receive adequate excitation. If an inhibitory neuron fires, it can reduce the voltage of other neurons, whether they are excitatory or inhibitory. Excitation is the accelerator for all neurons. Inhibition is the brake for all neurons.
Dopamine is not the feel good molecule or the basis of pleasure. The idea that any molecule considered in isolation could be the basis of a subjective experience is basically nonsense.
For people who can’t really reason through this idea, there is plenty of experimental evidence showing the complexity of each and every “celebrity” neurochemical — dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and so on.
I was asked this question on Quora.
We don’t really know. But as one of my professors once said half-jokingly, “the brain is a bag of tricks”. There is no reason to assume that all brain regions use the same coding scheme.
Here are some basic concepts that guide how neuroscientists think about information in the brain:
I was asked this question on Quora:
Can you explain to a layman what neuroplasticity entails?
Neuroplasticity is the umbrella term for all of the brain’s mechanisms for learning and memory.
Since the average layperson already knows about learning and memory, I’m not sure whether there are any interesting implications.
Unless of course you are surprised that the brain is involved in learning and memory. Then the implications are vast. 🙂