A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Imposter Poodles to Purples Numbers

A Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales

Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

The Island of the Colorblind

I can’t be the only person navigating towards these books in the bookstore. Someone else has to find these titles just as intriguing. Someone else has to find these books just as staggeringly fascinating. They are all books that tell you how to grasp the marvel that is our brain.

At any given point in my life I am reading or making up theories about the brain. My favorite random theory about the brain is that it is the only thing that exists in the body. Everything is a result of its imagination, including the universe, if there is a universe. If you must question this theory, you should first consider the endless list of questions that arise as a consequence of questioning this theory. For instance, what is to say that even the brain exists? and "so what!"

The "so what!" question leads to other queries. For instance, once we suppose the brain is the only part of the body, why are some of us physically stronger than others, why can’t we hold a musical note in high pitch, why can’t we fly or defy the laws of gravity, or dispose off societal structures at a whim. Did it take us four years to unseat an idiot president and conjure up a rockstar as replacement?

I haven’t even begun to talk about consciousness and it is a whole other universe that I won’t get into now. :)
 
I learnt that there is no wrong question when it comes to the brain. You can make up the most absurd question, and it will still not be ridiculous enough to elicit a shocked reaction. If anything, it will educe an equally stupefying or absurd response, if not scientific, then philosophical. So then, the thinking involved in arriving at that fascinating question becomes the exciting challenge.
 
The net is full of interesting articles on how Art, Religion, Music, Addiction and so on relate to the brain. Then there’s another brain-related genre that recently made it to my to-read list, like how technology has made it possible to restore eyesight and hearing, or control stammering. How tiny blood-cell sized devices (nanobots) can be inserted into your brain to perform therepeutic functions and so on.
 
Now I am in the phase where I make up my own theories on why we do what we do. I think I have it all figured out. Ask me why a tune gets stuck in our head all day, how time is represented in the brain, why we zone out of boring conversations, or how dreaming is different from imagining and I can totally whip up a good response. If it is not true, it is certainly something to think about! But, just like asking absurd questions, coming up with seemingly logical responses is entertaining as well. It produces a whirlwind of thoughts and ideas that will leave you feeling awed and humbled by this thing that controls everything that we are, and everything that we are perceived by others to be.

While meditating now, I try three very different things, one to let my mind go completely blank, two to let it go haywire and see where all that erratic whirlwind of thoughts take me, and three to introspect, which is to think consciously and be aware! I have clearly not mastered my mind, or rather my mind hasn’t mastered me, because when I choose to do one I do the other.

Despite this constant fascination for brain books, it beats me why I can never remember the anatomy of the brain. I have the back of the brain figured out, the Cerebellum and Medulla Oblongata. There are the Frontal, Temporal, Parietal and Occipital Lobes, the Gyruses, and some random odd things here and there. But why I can’t remember what they do, and where my thoughts and my skills reside I don’t know. Can’t the brain just be what I want it to be?

Like when someone hits me I want to know where I was hit. When I sing, I want to know which cell in my brain is being tickled. When my stomach growls, I need to know where to put the food so that it travels down and appeases the growling, when my brain wants answers I want to know which neuron to connect to another and create the required synapses.
 
I have been reading This is Your Brain On Music by Daniel Levitin in bits and pieces. It may be the next book I read, but even before I have read it I have all these thoughts on music, which seem more profound that what the book may be able to offer.

Will someone give me my PhD please?

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Where did the brain go on vacation? to a Hippocampus! ha!
and what did the Hippocampus say during his retirement speech? Thank you for the memories. :D