Who Am I?

In this episode, Jad and Robert talk about how the brain works.  They talk about many species’ brains, but mostly the human brain.  Scientists that research the brain are trying to figure out what areas of the brain tell a person to move a finger. They are also learning how the brain tells people to enjoy Pepsi or Coke. 

            Along with humans, scientist tested the brains of chimpanzees.  The scientists took a chimp and put it in front of a mirror.  They tried to tell if the chimp could recognize itself.  The chimp looked in the mirror and defiantly noticed another monkey.  The scientists could not tell weather or not the chimps knew it was them or a different monkey.  So what they did to find out for sure if the monkey knew was put a red dot on the chimp’s head.  Each time the chimp would look into the mirror and stare at the reflection.  Then they would touch the red dot on their own head and realize that it was them in the mirror.  With this experiment, the scientists learned that the brain of the monkey is able to tell the monkey who it is.

Along with the chimp discovery, scientists learned that the right half of the human brain is the half that recognizes one’s own self.  To find this out, they made a picture.  This was a picture of one person’s face (Julian) morphed with Bill Clinton’s face.  When Julian looked at the picture, he saw mostly himself in the picture.  When everyone else looked at the picture, they saw Bill Clinton. Without right hemisphere we don’t know who we are.

Out of every living being with a brain, the Human is the only one that is able to make images from their imagination.  If you ring a bell and show a bird or a baby to a monkey enough times, the monkey will eventually hear the bell and picture the bird or baby.  But only a human is able to picture a bird or baby, and change it in their mind to something such as a baby with wings.