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What are emotions?
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.]
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Inhibition and Excitation: the Yin and Yang of the Brain
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. Excitation is the process by which a neuron’s membrane potential (or voltage) increases. If…
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Dopamine is not the “feel good” molecule (and the very concept of a feel good molecule is meaningless)
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,…
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In what format is information stored in the brain?
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…
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What is neuroplasticity?
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…
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Is a memory a bunch of atoms? And does this mean we can transfer exact memories?
I was asked the following question on Quora. “Are specific memories just arrangements of atoms in our brains? Could you put certain molecules in someones head and give them an exact memory that you had?“ Short answer: No. Modern science has shown that every thing is an arrangement of atoms: neurons, apples, tables, rockets, asteroids,…