The following is a list of questions about the brain that I don’t know the answer to. I hope to someday answer every question on this list.
Basic/Fundamental Questions
Why do we have neurons? Why did evolution specialize a cell to a neuron?
Why is the brain lateralized?
Why is there a division between central and peripheral nervous system?
Unsolved Questions
In speech, how do we separate words given there are no obvious signals (such as a pause)?
Why do some people move their hands while speaking?
Why does time slow down and speed up?
E.g. During adrenaline-heavy events, time slows down.
What’s the link between psychology ideas and the brain?
E.g. Intersubjective reality, conservative vs liberal, stress, sexual behaviors, learning.
Why do some senses not/rarely show up in dreams?
E.g. Smell and touch.
Where does an efference copy come from? What’s the neural mechanism?
Why is the neocortex structured the way that it is?
What’s the purpose of dreams?
Do older memories take longer to access?
They certainly take longer to encode, but to access?
Think spatial and temporal locality from computer architecture
Why are most dreams forgotten so quickly?
What’s the brain of a mantis shrimp like?
Given it’s superior eyes, what’s its visual cortex like?
Does the brain actually use temporal/spatial summation for computation or is it just a byproduct of spike collisions?
What’s the difference between a signal and information?
This is important in understanding the brain because APs are signals, but that doesn’t mean they carry information.
After a signal is finished being processed in the brain, where does it go? When I see an object and follow the path of APs, where does it stop?
What’s the wiring diagram for the neocortex?
What is neuroscience trying to achieve? What does a complete understanding of the brain mean?
Is the meaning of a neural signal determined by the pathway it travels? Or is it due to the source/destination?
Is the grow of new neural pathways similar to the growth of new blood vessels? (angiogenesis)
Why does vision feel so different from smell?
Maybe the subjective experience of a sense is determined by the structure of the data.
Maybe the pathway the information takes determines the experience; the meaning of the signal.
As long as there is clear structure to the data and a feedback loop, the data should give rise to new qualia.
Most nuclei of the thalamus receive prominent return projections from the cerebral cortex, and the significance of these projections is one of the unsolved mysteries of neuroscience.
Where does the initiation of movement start?
What is consciousness?
Why is red red and not a different color?
Why are the brain’s connections to the body crisscrossed?
Solved Questions
What role did having white scleras play in social interactions?
Hypothesis is eye gaze.
Domesticated dogs also show an increase in scleras, why?
Is the brain a computer?
The answer depends on what we mean by “computer”. If by computer we strictly mean the everyday use (physical instantiation) of it such as laptop, smartphone, and desktop PC, then no the brain isn’t a computer. If we mean a more abstract version of the definition such as a Turing machine, then the no brain isn’t a computer. If we mean even more abstract such as an artifact/object that performs computation (where computation means calculation or running an algorithm), then yes the brain is a computer. So the more abstract the definition of computer, the more likely the brain is a computer.
Interestingly, the same applies to quantum computers, analog computers, and neuromorphic computing. All of which aren’t computers in the common sense but are in the abstract sense since they all perform computations. But the problem with this definition is that it applies to everything such as a sand hourglass (computes elapsed time), logic gates built out of water or light (optical gates), or even the weather (it computes the interaction between atoms, the Sun’s energy, landscape, etc).
Population coding based on Georgepopulous?
No
Mirror neurons?
Kind of, some behaviors are more supported than others
Panpsychism?
No
fMRI?
Initially no (blobology), but this paper convinced me that fMRI does have a place in explaining the brain. Mainly, it can record from scales greater than single neurons, but smaller than EEG. The results from that paper probably couldn’t have been found using electrode recordings or EEG.
Is the purpose of brains to help us survive?
Yes and no. On a species-level, yes. On an individual-level, no. This is seen in cases where people commit suicide and become addicted to drugs, fast-food, and don’t care for their survival.
Is the purpose of brains to mirror the outside work; to reflect reality?
Yes and no. Brains mirror the outside world as argued in Livewired, but we can also imagine ideas that don’t exist in reality such as fantasy books, dreams, and counterfactuals.
Why is myelin considered fat?
Myelin is when a specific glia cell (oligodendrocyte) wraps axons with multiple layers (like a toilet paper role) it’s own cell membrane. Since cell membranes are fat (phospholipid bilayer), myelin is just many layers of wrapped fat. Fat is a great insulator of not just heat, but ions, which is why it’s used to contain the ions in the action potential, speeding them up.
To Explore Questions
Is LTP expressed presynaptically or postsynaptically?
I know the consensus is postsynaptically, but I want to know how they got this answer.
What’s the purpose of brain ventricles?
I’m very skeptical of grid and place cells. Do they actually exist? What purpose do they serve? What other theory could explain the data?