The Brain
Posted on: January 4, 2007 - 1:24am
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The Brain
http://health.msn.com/healthnews/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100152269>1=8921
Must I really need to raise questions about science and God on this one? Or may I please ask to just provoke some of you to apply scientific knowledge to how the brain works. There is a lot of science saying that the brain works, just because it works. Is that evolution of a monkeys brain? Maybe it was aliens? Anyone ever read 2001:A Space Odyssey. Aliens? Or God's creatures? Aren't aliens(you do believe in aliens?) God's creatures if Jehova is the creator of all?
1 in 5 Americans believe we live in a Geocentric solar system. Who do you blame for that? God? I blame god.
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Care to be more specific? At this moment, the best I can do for you is show how the brain is not significantly different from the nucleus of a cell. Since almost all life on earth is cell based and those cells have nuclei, it's a givin that there would form a central unit to coordinate the actions of cells in a multi-cellular structure. Over millions of years that central unit becomes recognisable as a brain.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Absolutely. Have all not found much Beauty in the fact that WE and everything else that is living(other then single-celled organisms) are in FACT just a collection of living, breathing, thinking, reproducing organisms.
Mitochondria is believed by some scientists to have been a photosynthetic(maybe another way of getting energy too) single celled organism that simply just invaded and made itself apart of a another organism. Interesting way of thinking about life...
How are these organisms...cells if you may, how are they communicating? Electricity? I like that...
1 in 5 Americans believe we live in a Geocentric solar system. Who do you blame for that? God? I blame god.
Mr. Ripple, my best friend
Mitochondria is an organism?What is the source of this information
In laymans terms, electricity is an adequate description.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Mehh, I read it in a biology book a couple semesters ago.
Of course, mitochondria being a seperate organism at one point in the evolutionary process is merely a theory presented by scientists.
It's argument was that mitochondria was a photosynthetic, prokaryotic organism that invaded other organisms, retained its photosynthetic properties, then later developed the heterotrophic form of energy-production within the invaded organism using ATP(adenosine triphosphate, the energy currency if you will in all energy-consuming organisms.
endosymbiotic theory is the name of it if you wish to look it up.
(please note, merely a theory)
1 in 5 Americans believe we live in a Geocentric solar system. Who do you blame for that? God? I blame god.
Cells communicate with each other chemically, by exchanging substances called neurotransmitters.
Nerve impulses travelling along an individual nerve fibre are more electrical in nature, altho not quite like an electrical signal in a copper wire. In the wire we have movement of electrons, in the nerve cell we have a wave of back-and-forth movement of electrically charged atoms, a bit like flicking a rope and seeing the twitch travel along it. This is why we can stimulate nerves with electrical signals, which directly attract or repel those charged atoms.
Signals still pass from one nerve cell to the next by neurotransmitters.
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"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
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How would these cells be reacting, or acting when the mind is under the influence of a hallucinogen? Under such substances, are just the properties of how the nerves are supposed to act contrast much wildly to how normal nerve fiber's are?
1 in 5 Americans believe we live in a Geocentric solar system. Who do you blame for that? God? I blame god.
Your thinking of the chloroplast; mitochondria would be an aerobic organism that invaded anaerobic organisms.
The drugs are similar to neurotransmitters or can block the channels. This is what causes the effects of the drug.
"What right have you to condemn a murderer if you assume him necessary to "God's plan"? What logic can command the return of stolen property, or the branding of a thief, if the Almighty decreed it?"
-- The Economic Tendency of Freethought
In addition with mucking with neurotransmitters, some drugs cause real damage to neurons (destroying axons and such) resulting in odd sensory experiences.
-Triften
In regards to the questions of how multicellularity and cellular commication arose, I can offer a bit of insight.
Muticellularity is believed to have evolved several times over several different paths – like the eye for example, which has evolved dozens of times over. So the proper question to ask when seeking a scientific answer would be to "what is common to all multicelled organisms?" What would be necessary for a multicelled organism to evolve? Communication between cells is first and foremost.
From a molecular developmental biology point of view, many scientists are looking at slime molds, because we can see the rudiments of cell to cell communication in them.
Bacteria colonies typically develop in the form of hollow spheres, filaments or sheets. This is because any organism trapped at the center of the mass would starve. The bacteria in the colony are part of a single bacterium’s environment, just as the other cells in a muticelled organism are part of any single cell’s environment. The specialization of cells in a mutlicelled organism and even single celled organisms living in colonies is induced in large part by the cells around it.
Colonizing Protists (eukaryotes that are not plant, animal or fungi) like slime molds and certain choanoflagellates do exhibit communication between cells within colonies and do contain proteins which are utilized for cell to cell communication in true multicelled organisms.
I recently read a great book on the subject of the origins of cellular communication:
First Signals: The Evolution of Multicellular Development by John Bonner
Also, if we simply look at how eukaryotes themselves developed, we can see the rudiments of multicellular evolution in this endosymbiosis – which I'm also happy to get into if asked.
Evolution of multicellular animals as deduced from 5S rRNA sequences: a possible early emergence of the Mesozoa. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=318903 andPaired Sequence Difference in Ribosomal RNAs:Evolutionary and Phylogenetic ImplicationsFinally, we get clues as to how and when muticellularity arose from genetics via the study of ribosomal RNA sequences. From such studies phylogenic trees can be inferred. Check out some futher reading:
http://mbe.library.arizona.edu/data/1988/0501/7whee.pdf *BTW, this is a rehash of a response I wrote in my old "Ask the Evolutionist" forum on the old IG boards. Now that Reggie has the archive up and running, I'm in the process or transferring that forum to our boards.
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins
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It is quite the broad subject. Parts of the brain can be physically manipulated to produce a physical response. During brain surgery parts of motor cortex will be stimulated so the awake patient will respond in movement to show that brain damage hasn't occured. It's not painful since there are no nerve endings in the brain.
Hook some people up to a device that monitors reaction to stimuli and you'll see some varying results. Show some gay men some pics of male body builders, straight guys some naked women, or fundies some pictures of Jesus and they will respond in similar ways on a neurological level. Yes, fundies will get turned on by religious symbols. It's merely a product of conditioning.
One interesting note concerning the brain and god is that religious experience can by physically removed. It's an old story from my grad school days. Some very religious people who would remark have religious experiences had brain surgery which entailed scarring of part of their brain. Sorry I can't remember which part right now. The end result was that they never had the religious experiences that they previously had since their religion was tied to their reward center.
It wouldn't be surprising that there would be some genetic influence that makes one more likely to receive religious experience since behavior is largely influenced by combination of social conditioning and genetic predisposition. Therefore with the aid of gene therapy and psychiatric care there could be an elimination of religious extremism. Medication for schizophrenia is given to those who experience hallucinations whether it be hearing dogs talk or seeing angels. Sadly such behavior is often encouraged and admired in the fundamentalist community.
The courses I took on brain physiology was about 10 years ago so the information, and my memory is quite old but Matthew Alper wrote a good book on the subject.