Saturday’s class started with a debate of the question: “If a drug made you smarter, should it be
made available? Two monks came to the
front of the room. Each monk had three
minutes to outline their argument and then two more minutes to refute the other
monk’s position. The monk supporting a “smart
drug” said that such a drug would benefit everyone because it would increase
everyone’s intelligence so people could make better decisions. The monk against said that the drug would
likely be available only to those people who could afford it and would cause a
wider divide between people. I think it
was an even match. The next question to
debate next class is: If you knew that
you were going to get a neurological disease such as Alzheimer’s disease in the
future, would you want to know now.
After the debate, we discussed the basic size and shape of
the brain and differences in brain structure as we develop. I mentioned how the right side of the brain
controls the left side of the body and the left side of the brain controls the
right side of the body. When I was asked
why the nervous system was built this way, I said there was no satisfactory
answer. I mentioned some theories, but
none fully explained the observation. We
also talked about the corpus callosum and how it connects the hemispheres of
the brain.
This discussion of brain anatomy lead to brain dominance and
laterality. The monks and nuns knew if
they were right or left handed (20 of the 22 monks and nuns were right handed)
but few knew of they were right or left footed and none knew if they had a
dominant eye or ear. So we tested this
with some simple experiments (e.g., foot used to kick a ball; eye sighting;
preference for cupping an ear). The data
showed that right hand dominance was stronger than dominance for the other
parts of the body.
We will pick up neuroanatomy with lobes of the brain next
time and then start in with neurons and neurotransmission.
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