Sam Wang – Neuroscience of Everyday Life
Salepage : Sam Wang – Neuroscience of Everyday Life
You are your nervous system. This incredible network of cells is responsible for all of your ideas, perceptions, moods, desires, and dreams that make you a living, sentient entity. People have known for millennia that this was true. But no one knew how it happened. Thanks to the fascinating new area of neuroscience, we can now map the workings of the brain and the rest of the nervous system in incredible detail to explain how neurons, synapses, neurotransmitters, and other biological processes generate all of life’s experiences at all stages. Something extremely exciting is going on behind the scenes, from the amazing expansion of the brain in infancy through the process of acquiring a skill, falling in love, comprehending a joke, changing a viewpoint, or even forgetting a name.
For example, significant research over the last few decades can now explain occurrences like these:
Decisions: Neuronal studies of decision making demonstrate that our brain frequently commits to a course of action before we are conscious of having made a decision.
a clear breach of our feeling of autonomy
Memory is made up of several systems situated throughout the brain, which means you can lose your vehicle keys (information stored in the neocortex) yet still remember how to drive (a learned skill requiring the striatum and cerebellum).
Willpower is more than a metaphor; it is a quantitative quality that relies on a limited mental resource, similar to a muscle. While every person has a stable willpower capacity throughout their lives, can it be improved by training? Again, similar to a muscle.
Religion and spirituality: The quest for causes and consequences, the ability to think about individuals and motives, and language appear to be crucial for the emergence of organized religion. Mystical experiences can also be linked to certain brain activity.
The Neuroscience of Everyday Life covers a wide range of issues in 36 highly researched courses, opening your eyes to how neurological processes generate the common elements of human experience. You will investigate the brain under stress and in love, while studying, sleeping, thinking, hallucinating, and just gazing around? which is less concerned with capturing truth and more concerned with producing illusions that help us to operate in our surroundings
Your professor is Princeton University’s famous neuroscientist and Professor Sam Wang, an award-winning researcher and best-selling book, public speaker, and TV and radio pundit. Professor Wang’s intelligent and fun approach makes this course a delight for anybody curious about how their own brain works. And his vibrant, lavishly illustrated lecture requires no prior knowledge of science.
