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The brain is an information processing organ. It is a successor to other less sophisticated organ systems, which evolutionarily played parts of this role. Because the brain is much more specialized and complex, it's better at processing information as discreet elements of the real world.

To understand the brain, we must understand that principally it is a network. This word "network" is most important, to explain every aspect of the brain and mind.

Our brain network (of neurons and glial cells) is comprised of many types of physical elements and organized structures:
• processing units (neurons)
• interconnections (axons, dendrites)
• signal-carriers (neurotransmitters, ions, transport vesicles)
• support cells (non-neuronal cells)
• topologies (structure, paths, patterns)

QUESTIONS WE WILL EXPLORE ABOUT THE "NETWORKED BRAIN":
■ How does the brain's network form?
■ How do its many parts work together to create a cohesive whole?
■ Does the network's structure change as we grow? How?
■ What does the network do, to create the "mind"?
■ What does it mean for the network to be "active"?
■ How does personality & awareness emerge from just a network?

Some of these questions are very broad, and will be discussed in this meetup and elaborated in future discussions.

SUGGESTED VIDEOS TO PREPARE:

  1. How do neurons connect to each other?
    https://youtu.be/ySgmZOTkQA8 [4 minutes]

  2. 3D Brain Scans show every Synapse
    https://youtu.be/nvXuq9jRWKE [4 minutes]

  3. The Shocking Ways Your Body Makes Electricity
    https://youtu.be/UZthGjcuTDs [20 minutes]

  4. The Stilwell Brain
    https://youtu.be/rA5qnZUXcqo [26 minutes]

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Welcome to the series "Comprehensivist Wednesdays". Transdisciplinarity, Renaissance humanism, homo universalis, and Polymathy are some of the ways of describing this approach which Buckminster Fuller called Comprehensivity and described as “macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive”.

See the calendar at https://www.meetup.com/52LivingIdeas/events/calendar/
A Meetup Every Day, Every Week, For Everyone!
Every Weekday at 9pm ET; On Weekends at 2:30pm ET

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