Neurobiology: what is this science and what does it study? Its history of development and modern methods. The neuroscience of creativity, or how to teach the brain to generate ideas

For a long time it was believed that Creative skills is a gift, and insights appear as if by magic. But latest research in the field of neuroscience showed that we can all become creative. It is enough to direct the brain in the right direction and exercise a little.

Creative approach is needed not only for artists, poets and musicians. It works in every field: it helps solve problems, smooth out conflicts, impress colleagues and enjoy more full life. Neuroscientist Estanislao Bahrah explains in his book The Flexible Mind where ideas come from and how to train the brain to think creatively.

neural lanterns

Imagine for a moment: we are top floor skyscraper, a night city spread out before us. Somewhere in the windows the light is on. Cars scurry through the streets, illuminating the way with headlights, lanterns flicker along the roads. Our brain is like a city in the dark, in which individual avenues, streets and houses are always lit. "Lanterns" is neural connections. Some "streets" (nerve pathways) are illuminated throughout. It's data we know and proven ways to solve problems.

Creativity lives where it is dark - on unbeaten paths, where unusual ideas and solutions await the traveler. If we need unhackneyed forms or ideas, if we crave inspiration or revelation, we will have to make an effort and light new “lanterns”. In other words, to form new neural micronetworks.

How ideas are born

Creativity feeds on ideas, and ideas are born in the brain.

Imagine that there are many boxes in the brain. Each case from life is stored in one of them. Sometimes the drawers start opening and closing in a chaotic manner, and the memories connect randomly. The more relaxed we are, the more often they open and close, and the more memories are jumbled up. When this happens, we have more ideas than at other times. For everyone it is individual: for someone - in the shower, for others - while jogging, playing sports, driving a car, on the subway or bus, while playing or swinging their daughter on a swing in the park. These are moments of clarity of mind.

To make ideas come more often, relax your brain.

(source:)

When the brain is relaxed, we have more thoughts. They may be ordinary, familiar, or seem unimportant, but sometimes ideas that we call creative seep into their ranks. The more ideas, the more chances that one of them will be non-standard.

In other words, ideas are a random combination of concepts, experiences, examples, thoughts and stories that are sorted into boxes of smart memory. We are not inventing anything new. Novelty is how we combine the known. Suddenly these combinations of concepts collide and we "see" the idea. It dawned on us. The higher the level of mental clarity, the more opportunities for discovery. The less extraneous noise in the head, the calmer we become, enjoying what we love, the more insights appear.

The strength of the environment

Innovative companies understand the importance of creating a creative environment. They place their employees in bright, spacious, pleasant rooms.

In a calm environment, when there is no need to extinguish the fire of everyday life, people become more inventive. In the Argentina national team, Lionel Messi is the same person with the same brain as in Barcelona. But in Barcelona, ​​he is more productive: he can carry out 10-15 attacks per match, of which two or three end in a goal. At the same time, in the national team, he manages to carry out two or three attacks per game, therefore, there is less chance that they will be non-standard and lead to a goal. How he uses his skills and creativity depends very much on the environment, the atmosphere in training, the team and how he feels. Creativity is not some magic light bulb that can be turned on anywhere, it is closely related to the environment. It needs a stimulating environment.

Fundamentals of thought processes. Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both psychology and neuroscience, intersecting with cognitive psychology and neuropsychology.

Cognitive neuroscience is based on the theories of the cognitive sciences combined with evidence from neuropsychology and computer simulations.

Due to its interdisciplinary nature, cognitive neuroscience can have a variety of backgrounds. In addition to the aforementioned related disciplines, cognitive neuroscience may overlap with the following disciplines: neuroscience, bioengineering, psychiatry, neuroscience, physics, computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and mathematics.

In cognitive neuroscience, experimental methods of psychophysiology, cognitive psychology, functional neuroimaging, electrophysiology, psychogenetics are used. An important aspect Cognitive neuroscience is the study of people who have mental impairments due to brain damage.

The connection between the structure of neurons and cognitive abilities is confirmed by such facts as an increase in the number and size of synapses in the brain of rats as a result of their training, a decrease in the efficiency of transmission of a nerve impulse through synapses, observed in people affected by Alzheimer's disease.

One of the first thinkers who argued that thinking takes place in the brain was Hippocrates. In the 19th century, scientists such as Johann Peter Müller attempted to study functional structure brain in terms of localization of mental and behavioral functions in brain regions.

1. Emergence of a new discipline

1.1. The birth of cognitive science

On September 11, 1956, a large-scale meeting of the cognitivists took place in . George A. Miller presented his work "The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two", Noam Chomsky and Newell and Simon presented the results of their work with computer science. Ulrich Neisser commented on the results of this meeting in his book cognitive psychology(1967). The term? psychology? wanes in the 1950s and 1960s, giving way to the term "cognitive science". Behaviorists, such as Miller, began to focus on the representation of speech rather than general behavior. David Marr's proposal for a hierarchical representation of memory led many psychologists to accept the idea that mental capacity, including algorithms, require significant processing in the brain.

1.2. Combining neuroscience and cognitive science

Until the 1980s, the interaction between neuroscience and cognitive science was negligible. The term "cognitive neuroscience" was coined by George Miller and Michael Gazzaniga "in the back of a taxi in New York". Cognitive neuroscience provided the theoretical basis for cognitive science that emerged between 1950 and 1960, with approaches from experimental psychology, neuropsychology, and neuroscience. At the end of the 20th century, new technologies developed that today form the basis of the methodology of cognitive neuroscience, including transcranial magnetic stimulation (1985) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (1991). Earlier methods used in cognitive neuroscience included EEG (human EEG - 1920) and MEG (1968). Occasionally, cognitive neuroscientists have used other brain imaging modalities such as PET and SPECT. future technology in neuroscience is an editing of near-infrared spectroscopy, which uses light absorption to calculate changes in oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin in cortical regions. Other methods include microneurography, facial electromyography, and eye tracking.

2. Techniques and methods

2.1. Tomography

The structure of the brain is studied using computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, angiography. CT scan and angiography have lower brain imaging resolution than magnetic resonance imaging.

The study of the activity of brain zones based on the analysis of metabolism makes it possible to carry out positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging.

2.2. Electroencephalogram

3. Areas of the brain and mental activity

3.1. forebrain

• Frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex- planning, control and execution of movements (motor area of ​​the cerebral cortex - precentral gyrus), speech, abstract thinking, judgments.

Also topics of cognitive neuroscience are:

6. Latest trends

One of the most significant current trends in cognitive neuroscience in that the field of study is gradually expanding: from localizing a region of the brain to performing specific functions in the adult brain using one technology, studies diverge into different directions such as monitoring REM sleep, a machine capable of perceiving electrical activity brain during sleep.

Ecology of Consciousness: Life. It has been absolutely proven that our brain is a wildly plastic thing, and individual training seriously affects him - to a much greater extent than innate predispositions.

When compared with the cubs of other animals, we can say that a person is born with an underdeveloped brain: its mass in a newborn is only 30% of the mass of the brain of an adult. Evolutionary biologists suggest that we must be born prematurely in order for our brains to develop by interacting with the external environment. Science journalist Asya Kazantseva in the lecture "Why should the brain learn?" within the framework of the program "Art Education 17/18" told

About the process of learning from the point of view of neuroscience

and explained how the brain changes under the influence of experience, as well as how sleep and laziness are useful during study.

Who studies the phenomenon of learning

The question of why the brain learns is dealt with by at least two important sciences - neuroscience and experimental psychology. Neurobiology, which studies the nervous system and what happens in the brain at the level of neurons at the time of learning, most often works not with people, but with rats, snails and worms. Experimental psychologists try to understand what things affect a person's learning ability, such as giving him an important task that tests his memory or learning ability, and watching how he copes with it. These sciences have developed intensively in recent years.

If you look at learning from the point of view of experimental psychology, it is useful to remember that this science is the heir of behaviorism, and behaviorists believed that the brain is a black box, and they were fundamentally not interested in what was happening in it. They perceived the brain as a system that can be influenced by stimuli, after which some kind of magic happens in it, and it reacts in a certain way to these stimuli. Behaviorists were interested in what this reaction might look like and what could influence it. They believed thatlearning is a change in behavior as a result of mastering new information

This definition is still widely used in the cognitive sciences. For example, if a student was given Kant to read and he remembered that there is “a starry sky above his head and moral law in me, ”he voiced this in the exam and he was given an A, which means that training has taken place.

On the other hand, the same definition applies to the behavior of the bearded seal (aplysia). Neuroscientists often experiment with this mollusk. If you shock Aplysia in the tail, she becomes afraid of the surrounding reality and retracts her gills in response to weak stimuli, which she was not afraid of before. Thus, she also undergoes a change in behavior, learning. This definition can be applied to even simpler biological systems. Imagine a system of two neurons connected by one contact. If we apply two weak current pulses to it, then the conductivity will temporarily change in it and it will become easier for one neuron to send signals to another. This is also training at the level of this small biological system. Thus, from the learning that we observe in external reality, it is possible to build a bridge to what is happening in the brain. It has neurons, changes in which affect our response to the environment, i.e., the learning that has taken place.

How the brain works

But to talk about the brain, you need to have a basic understanding of how it works. In the end, each of us has these one and a half kilograms in our heads. nervous tissue. The brain is made up of 86 billion nerve cells, or neurons. A typical neuron has a cell body with many processes. Part of the processes are dendrites, which collect information and transmit it to the neuron. And one long process, the axon, passes it on to the next cells. Under the transfer of information within one nerve cell it means an electrical impulse that goes along the process, like along a wire. One neuron interacts with another through a contact point called a “synapse”, the signal goes through chemical substances. An electrical impulse leads to the release of molecules - neurotransmitters: serotonin, dopamine, endorphins. They seep through the synaptic cleft, act on the receptors of the next neuron, and it changes its functional state- for example, channels open on its membrane, through which ions of sodium, chlorine, calcium, potassium, etc. begin to pass. This leads to the fact that, in turn, a potential difference is also formed on it, and the electrical signal goes further , to the next cell.

But when a cell transmits a signal to another cell, this is most often not enough for some noticeable changes in behavior, because one signal can also be obtained by chance due to some kind of disturbance in the system. To exchange information, cells transmit many signals to each other. The main coding parameter in the brain is the frequency of impulses: when one cell wants to transmit something to another cell, it starts sending hundreds of signals per second. By the way, the early research mechanisms of the 1960s and 70s shaped sound signal. An electrode was implanted into the brain of an experimental animal, and by the speed of the crackle of a machine gun that was heard in the laboratory, it was possible to understand how active the neuron was.

The pulse frequency coding system works on different levels transmission of information - even at the level of simple visual signals. We have cones on the retina that respond to different lengths waves: short (in the school textbook they are called blue), medium (green) and long (red). When a wave of light of a certain length enters the retina, different cones are excited in varying degrees. And if the wave is long, then the red cone begins to intensively send a signal to the brain so that you understand that the color is red. However, everything is not so simple here: the sensitivity spectrum of the cones overlaps, and the green one also pretends that she saw something like that. Then the brain analyzes it on its own.

How the brain makes decisions

Principles similar to those used in modern mechanical research and experiments on animals with implanted electrodes can be applied to much more complex behavioral acts. For example, in the brain there is a so-called pleasure center - the nucleus accumbens. The more active this area, the more the subject likes what he sees, and the higher the likelihood that he will want to buy it or, for example, eat it. Experiments with a tomograph show that, by a certain activity of the nucleus accumbens, it is possible, even before a person voices his decision, for example, regarding the purchase of a blouse, to say whether he will buy it or not. As the excellent neuroscientist Vasily Klyucharev says, we do everything to please our neurons in the nucleus accumbens.

The difficulty is that in our brain there is no unity of judgments, each department can have its own opinion about what is happening. A story similar to the dispute of cones in the retina is repeated with more complex things. Let's say you see a blouse, you like it, and your nucleus accumbens emits signals. On the other hand, this blouse costs 9 thousand rubles, and the salary is another week later - and then your amygdala, or amygdala (the center associated primarily with negative emotions), begins to emit its electrical impulses: “Listen, there is not much money left. If we buy this blouse now, we will have problems.” The frontal cortex makes a decision depending on who yells louder - the nucleus accumbens or the amygdala. And here it is also important that each time later we are able to analyze the consequences to which this decision led. The fact is that frontal cortex communicates with the amygdala, and with the nucleus accumbens, and with the parts of the brain associated with memory: they tell her what happened after the last time we made such a decision. Depending on this, the frontal cortex may be more attentive to what the amygdala and nucleus accumbens are telling it. So the brain is able to change under the influence of experience.

Why are we born with small brains?

All human babies are born underdeveloped, literally premature compared to babies of any other species. No animal has such a long childhood as a person, and they do not have offspring that would be born with such a small brain relative to the mass of the brain of an adult: in a human newborn it is only 30%.

All researchers agree that we are forced to give birth to a person immature because of the impressive size of his brain. The classic explanation is the obstetric dilemma, i.e. the story of the conflict between bipedalism and a large head. To give birth to a cub with such a head and a large brain, you need to have wide hips, but it is impossible to widen them endlessly, because it will interfere with walking. According to anthropologist Holly Dunsworth, in order to give birth to more mature children, it would be enough to increase the width of the birth canal by only three centimeters, but evolution still at some point stopped the expansion of the hips. Evolutionary biologists have suggested that we probably need to be born prematurely in order for our brain to develop in interaction with the external environment, because in the womb as a whole there are quite a few stimuli.

There is a famous study by Blackmore and Cooper. They conducted experiments with kittens in the 70s: most They kept them in the dark for a while and put them in a lighted cylinder for five hours a day, where they received an unusual picture of the world. One group of kittens saw only horizontal stripes, and the other - only vertical. As a result, the kittens had big problems with a perception of reality. Some crashed into the legs of chairs because they couldn't see the vertical lines, others ignored the horizontal ones in the same way - for example, they didn't understand that the table had an edge. They were tested with them, played with a stick. If a kitten grew up among horizontal lines, then he sees and catches a horizontal stick, but simply does not notice a vertical one. Then they implanted electrodes into the cerebral cortex of the kittens and looked at how the stick should be tilted in order for the neurons to start emitting signals. It is important that nothing would happen to an adult cat during such an experiment, but the world little kitten A person whose brain is just learning to take in information can be permanently distorted as a result of such an experience. Neurons that have never been exposed stop functioning.

We used to think that the more connections between different neurons, departments of the human brain, the better. This is true, but with certain reservations. It is necessary not just that there are many connections, but that they have something to do with real life. A one and a half year old child has much more synapses, that is, contacts between neurons in the brain, than a professor at Harvard or Oxford. The problem is that these neurons are connected randomly. AT early age the brain matures rapidly, and its cells form tens of thousands of synapses between everything and everything. Each neuron scatters processes in all directions, and they cling to everything they can reach. But then the principle “Use it or lose it” begins to work. The brain lives in environment and tries to cope with various tasks: the child is taught to coordinate movements, grab a rattle, etc. When he is shown how to eat with a spoon, he has connections in his cortex that are useful for eating with a spoon, since it was through them that he drove nerve impulses. And the connections that are responsible for throwing porridge all over the room become less pronounced, because parents do not encourage such actions.

Synapse growth processes are fairly well understood at the molecular level. Eric Kandel was given Nobel Prize for the fact that he guessed to study memory not in humans. A person has 86 billion neurons, and until a scientist understands these neurons, he would have to exterminate hundreds of subjects. And since no one allows so many people to have their brains cut open to see how they learned to hold a spoon, Kandel came up with the idea of ​​working with snails. Aplysia is a super convenient system: you can work with it by studying only four neurons. In fact, this mollusk has more neurons, but in its example it is much easier to identify systems associated with learning and memory. During his experiments, Kandel realized that short term memory- this is a temporary increase in the conductivity of already existing synapses, and the long-term one is the growth of new synaptic connections.

This turned out to be applicable to humans as well. it's like we're walking on grass. At first, we don't care where we go on the field, but gradually we tread a path, which then turns into a dirt road, and then into an asphalt street and a three-lane highway with lamps. Similarly, nerve impulses tread their own paths in the brain.

How associations are formed

Our brain is so arranged: it forms connections between events that occur simultaneously. Usually, when a nerve impulse is transmitted, neurotransmitters are released that act on the receptor, and the electrical impulse goes to the next neuron. But there is one receptor that doesn't work that way, and it's called NMDA. It is one of the key receptors for memory formation at the molecular level. Its peculiarity is that it works if the signal came from both sides at the same time.

All neurons lead somewhere. One can lead to a large neural network that is associated with the sound of a trendy song in a cafe. And others - to another network associated with the fact that you went on a date. The brain is sharpened to link cause and effect, it is able to remember at the anatomical level that there is a connection between a song and a date. The receptor is activated and allows calcium to pass through. It begins to enter into a huge number of molecular cascades, which lead to the work of some previously not working genes. These genes carry out the synthesis of new proteins, and another synapse grows. So the connection between the neural network responsible for the song and the network responsible for the date becomes stronger. Now even a weak signal is enough for a nerve impulse to go and you form an association.

How learning affects the brain

There is famous story about London taxi drivers. I don’t know how it is now, but just a few years ago, in order to become a real taxi driver in London, you had to pass an orientation exam in the city without a navigator - that is, to know at least two and a half thousand streets, one-way traffic, road signs, bans on stopping, and also be able to build the best route. Therefore, in order to become a London taxi driver, people went to courses for several months. The researchers recruited three groups of people. One group - enrolled in courses to become taxi drivers. The second group - those who also went to the courses, but dropped out. And people from the third group did not even think about becoming taxi drivers. To all three groups, scientists made a tomogram to see the density of gray matter in the hippocampus. This is an important area of ​​the brain associated with the formation of memory and spatial thinking. It was found that if a person did not want to become a taxi driver, or wanted to, but did not, then the density of gray matter in his hippocampus remained the same. But if he wanted to become a taxi driver, went through training and really mastered a new profession, then the density of gray matter increased by a third - this is a lot.

And although it is not completely clear where the cause is and where the effect is (whether people really mastered a new skill, or whether they initially had this area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe brain well developed and therefore it was easy for them to learn), our brain is definitely a wildly plastic thing, and individual training seriously influences it - to a much greater extent than innate predispositions. It is important that even at the age of 60, training has an effect on the brain. Of course, not as efficiently and quickly as at 20, but in general, the brain retains some ability for plasticity throughout life.

Why should the brain be lazy and sleep

When the brain learns something, it grows new connections between neurons. And this process is slow and expensive, you need to spend a lot of calories, sugar, oxygen, energy on it. Generally, human brain, despite the fact that its weight is only 2% of the weight of the entire body, it consumes about 20% of all the energy that we receive. Therefore, at every opportunity, he tries not to learn anything, not to waste energy. In fact, this is very nice of him, because if we memorized everything we see every day, then we would go crazy pretty quickly.

In learning, from the point of view of the brain, there are two fundamental important points. The first is that, when we master any skill, it becomes easier for us to do the right thing than the wrong one. For example, you learn to drive a car with a manual transmission, and at first you don't care if you shift from first to second or from first to fourth. For your hand and brain, all these movements are equally likely; it doesn't matter to you which way to drive the nerve impulses. And when you are already a more experienced driver, it is physically easier for you to shift gears correctly. If you get into a car with a fundamentally different design, you will again have to think and control by willpower so that the momentum does not go down the beaten path.

Second important point:

Sleep is the most important thing in learning.

It has many functions: maintaining health, immunity, metabolism and various aspects of the brain. But all neuroscientists agree that the most main function sleep is a work with information and learning. When we have mastered a skill, we want to form a long-term memory. New synapses grow over several hours, this is long process, and it is most convenient for the brain to do this when you are not busy with anything. During sleep, the brain processes the information received during the day and erases what needs to be forgotten from it.

There is an experiment with rats where they were taught to walk through a maze with electrodes implanted in their brains and found that in their sleep they repeated their path through the maze, and the next day they walked better. Many human tests have shown that what we learn before bed is more recalled than what we learn in the morning. It turns out that students who start preparing for the exam somewhere closer to midnight are doing everything right. For the same reason, it's important to think about problems before bed. Of course, it will be more difficult to fall asleep, but we will upload the question to the brain, and maybe some solution will come in the morning. By the way, dreams are most likely just side effect information processing.

How learning depends on emotions

Training in to a large extent depends on attention, because it is aimed at sending impulses over and over again along specific paths of the neural network. From huge amount information, we focus on something, take it into working memory. Further, what we hold our attention on, falls into long-term memory. You could understand my entire lecture, but that doesn't mean that it will be easy for you to retell it. And if you draw a bicycle right now on a piece of paper, this does not mean that it will ride well. People tend to forget important details, especially if they're not bike experts.

Children have always had attention problems. But now in this sense, everything is becoming easier. AT modern society specific factual knowledge is no longer needed so much - it’s just that there are an incredibly large number of them. Much more important is the ability to quickly navigate information, to distinguish reliable sources from unreliable ones. We almost no longer need to concentrate on the same thing for a long time and memorize large amounts of information - it is more important to switch quickly. In addition, now there are more and more professions just for people who find it difficult to concentrate.

There is one more important factor, influencing learning - emotions. In fact, this is generally the main thing that we had for many millions of years of evolution, even before we built up all this huge frontal cortex. We evaluate the value of mastering a particular skill in terms of whether it pleases us or not. Therefore, it is great if our basic biological emotional mechanisms can be involved in learning. For example, to build such a motivation system in which the frontal cortex does not think that we should learn something through perseverance and focus, but in which the nucleus accumbens says that it just fucking likes this activity.

Neuroscientists, neurophysiologists, neurolinguists, neuropsychologists - among these scientists there are those who not only study the brain, but also write books about it. We have collected the best for you. Each of these books has become a sensation. In each - unusual research and amazing conclusions. Read and be surprised.

Susan Weinshenk is a well-known American scientist specializing in behavioral psychology. She is called "The Brain Lady" as she studies the latest advances in neuroscience and the human brain and applies her knowledge to business and Everyday life. In her book, Susan talks about the basic laws of the brain and psyche. She identifies 7 main motivators of human behavior that determine our lives. If you know these laws and motivators, as well as the techniques that trigger them, you can influence the behavior of any people. More about this in the review of the book "Laws of Influence", presented in the Library " the main idea". you can download on our website for free.

David Lewis is called the father of neuromarketing. Since the 1980s, he has been conducting research on the electrical responses of the brain to different types advertising, revealing the principles of mental activity of buyers that can be applied in sales. For more than thirty years, the topic of neuroscience research by David Lewis has been the vulnerability of the human brain and various methods impact on him. “I attached electrodes to the heads of volunteers to record the electrical activity of their brains while watching television commercials. Took saliva samples for analysis, tracked with special devices eye movements and slight changes in facial expressions. Those early studies resulted in what became the multi-billion dollar neuromarketing industry,” he says. One of the first discoveries that Lewis made was that a person going to the store does not always pursue a bargain as his goal. Often in this way people fight depression, cheer themselves up, increase their own prestige, satisfy curiosity, destroy boredom. Shopping has become entertainment and at the same time therapy for millions of people. And for corporations in the conditions of colossal competition, the number one task has become the study of the processes occurring in the head of the buyer. Why does a person choose from a million analog products in favor of a particular brand? About this in this book, presented in the Library "Main Thought".

Norman Doidge, MD, devoted his research to brain plasticity. In his main work, he makes a revolutionary statement: our brain is able to change its own structure and work due to the thoughts and actions of a person. Doidge talks about latest discoveries, proving that the human brain is plastic, which means it can change itself. The book features stories of scientists, doctors, and patients who have achieved amazing transformations. To those who had serious problems, managed to cure diseases of the brain that were considered incurable without operations and pills. Well, those who did not have special problems, could significantly improve the functioning of their brain. More details provided in the Main Thought Library.

Kelly McGonigal is a professor at Stanford University, a neuroscientist, Ph.D., psychologist, and a leading expert in the study of the relationship between mental and physical states person. Her training courses The Science of Willpower, The Science of Compassion, and others have won numerous awards. McGonigal's books have been translated and published in dozens of countries around the world, they talk in popular language about how to use advances in the field of psychology and neurophysiology to make a person happier and more successful. This book is about the problem of lack of willpower. Who among us hasn't promised ourselves to lose weight, stop overeating, stop smoking, start going to the gym on Monday, end lateness or overpriced shopping? But each time these weaknesses took over us, supplying us with a sense of guilt and our own worthlessness. Is there a way out of this vicious circle? Yes there is! Kelly McGonigal is convinced that science can help us train willpower. About this in this book, presented in the Library "Main Thought".

John Medina is a renowned molecular biologist who studies the genes involved in brain development and genetics. mental disorders. Medina is a professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington and director of the Center for Brain Research at Seattle Pacific University. Along with active scientific activity, John Medina has been a consultant for various biological and pharmaceutical companies for many years, is engaged in literary creativity- He is the author of 6 popular science books on biology. The result of Medina's many years of research was the concept that describes the 12 "rules of the brain", which is reflected in this book. , presented in the Library "Main Thought", we will introduce you to the concept of a scientist.

André Alemand is a professor of cognitive neuropsychology at the University of Groningen who has been studying brain aging for many years. In his book, Aleman asks the question of what determines the preservation of brain functions in old age, despite natural biological processes. In the book, he tells how to protect yourself from irreversible changes and secure yourself good quality life at any age. Much depends on what you know about how the brain works and what habits you develop throughout your life. For example, the latest neurophysiological studies prove that neurons continue to be born in the mature brain, but if the brain “rests” and does not learn new things, then they quickly die.

Neurobiology - a science that studies the structure, functioning, development, genetics, biochemistry, physiology and pathology nervous system. The study of behavior is also a branch of neuroscience that is increasingly penetrating the realms of psychology and other sciences. The nervous system, inherent in many living beings, is of particular interest to science in view of its possible improvement, complex scheme work and a direct impact on people's lives. Breakthroughs in the field of neuroscience will allow us to solve the problems of aging, psychological disorders, mental illness, brain function and much more: including a glimpse into the secrets of the human nervous system.

Brain surgery is an extremely complex process, during which it is sometimes important for patients to remain conscious. This is necessary so that the surgeon can speak to the person at any time and make sure that correct work its linguistic, sensory and emotional functions. Of course, this is very disturbing and unpleasant time the patient may panic, so scientists are constantly looking for the best safe method their reassurance. Recently, it turned out that you can calm the panic of patients by stimulating a special area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe brain responsible for laughter and euphoria.