Today’s science has achieved reasonable understanding of the universe (at least its age and composition), the atoms, and the genes. What’s left to explain, the thing that is still murky is our brain. How does our brain process information? Why do we have consciouness? Are humans the only species that have consciousness? Why do we have dreams? These unanswered questions points to the last frontier of science: understanding the brain. The progress in this field is lead by neuroscience, together with physiology and psychology research.
To understand the brain, we need to start from our five senses: vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste. Each of these provides a window on how brain processes information, and how brain generates response. Neurscientists have made great stride in each of these five subjects. We have come to understand clearly, at least in physiological level, how the structure of the organs –eyes, ears, nose, limbs, tongue — and how the send information to the brain. Research in this direction also leads to the design of articial eyes, artificial ears, and artificial sweetners.
A second step is looking at the aggreate pattern from sensory information. one of such aggregate patterns is our emotion. In this issue of Scientific American Mind (Oct/Nov 2006), researchers found that our emotion is also affected by our facial expression. if you make a sad face, after a while you will feel sad. The coupling of our emotion and facial expression (and maybe body posture) is a fascinating discovery. Therefore emtion is not entirely generated from inside (the thinking process), it can also be generated from automatic muscle movement. This explains why small body movement improves a depressed person’s mood, and why taking deep breath and standing upright makes you feel powerful. This secret was discovered by Self-help guru Anthony Robbins independently, and he teaches people to apply this to improve their emotional state.
A third step is understanding language, how it is processed and how it affects our emotion and thinking. Current MRI study has revealed how our brains respond to different words with different brain sections. It also reveals bilingual speakers respond to the same words in two different languages with the same region of the brain.
Then we need to understand dreams. What do they tell us? Is it possible to take a snapshot of a dream, rendering it to a computer screen? If we can do this, we probably have had a good understanding on the neuron interaction and electronic process inside the brain. Dream is an important of piece of puzzle on brain study.
Finally we will grab the most coveted prize: human consciousness. How do we perceive ourselves? How do we perceive reality. This will lead to the answers to age-old religious questions. We will finally understand the issue of soul, and the relationship between mind and body.
