Perspective 2

In his listing of new neuroscience blogs, the author of Neurophilosophy included Neurons Firing and noted that it “includes short tutorial-style posts on various aspects of neuroscience”.

I wrote the tutorial-style posts as a way to cement my own learning about the brain, have a place to file my learning, and with the hope that folks will add to the story. For instance, thanks to Tantalus Prime there is now a second analogy about the role of glia cells.

Having set the foundation for a basic overview of how the brain functions, I am next going to consider how the brain remembers and learns.

Before continuing, though, below are links to some visuals of the brain, the first two created with Flash. For the uninitiated, Flash is a program used to create animations.

On the Neuroscience for Kids site there are a number of Flash animations about the brain. (They are the files that end with .swf, which stands for ShockWave File.) This particular animation is a fly-through (or a slice-through) of the brain.

And this animation is on the surfari.editme.com site, which is the wiki I co-edited with the learning specialist at my school.

Here is yet one more way to visualize the brain, in this case using a program that looks at fMRI data. Johan (who writes the phineas gage fan club), has a detailed descriptoin of Brain Voyager: Brain Tutor including a link to take you to this freeware program. I urge you to read Johan’s post before tinkering with the program as he demystifies the directions!