CHAPTER 8: THE NERVOUS SYSTEM: SOURCE PAR EXCELLENCE

In a mechanistic-like oversimplification, the brain shows some similarities to a computer handling logical information, but, in fact, they are very different. In the brain, pattern recognition is an adaptive process that makes use of neural circuit changes, principally, by adjusting the strength of certain neural connections. Biological evolution “chose” the way to adjust them in order to improve individual survival. The brain has a population of hundreds of billions of neurons; hence, the interconnection of this neural circuitry is huge, so much, that it allows the brain to make each individual unique, with the ability to create art and science. In spite of such enormous and interconnected size, it has an organization that, in a way, makes easier to theorize how the brain works. Moreover, it is possible to find experimentally how neural populations encode information, and to simulate it with computational theories in an effort to find hypotheses to explain brain higher functions, such as learning and behavior.