The Brain: A Computer with Secrets

by Lida Prypchan

A genius and a fool can have a brain that is identical in appearance: neither its size nor its structure under the microscope are useful in deciphering intellectual capacity.  The heart speaks through palpitations, but the brain is quiet; it does not reveal its secrets, although it generates electrical impulses that allow us to study the way it works.

In 1870, Erich Hitzig, a Prussian medical officer, walking through a battlefield at Sedan, looked for corpses whose brains were exposed.  With an electrical battery attached to two metal ducts, he discovered that when part of the brain is stimulated with an electric shock, the limbs on the opposite side of the body performed certain movements.

Our movements and sensations cause electrical impulses that travel through a network of neurons or nerve cells to the brain (which is the command center).  We have neurons all over our bodies, even in the most hidden places, and they are all connected to a huge network.  Messages arrive to the brain and it sends out an order.

The neuron is radical in the manner in which it acts: all or nothing, it either generates an electrical impulse or it does not.  It is not yet known how the brain decodes the messages and makes its decisions.  However, the route the messages follow is known.  What is impressive is the amount of different things that the brain does at once and how fast it does them.

Computers are a man-made model of the brain.

I had the opportunity to play a game of chess with a computer, which had seven levels.  I never beat it, not even at the first level.  The computer has magnificent memory, which has the basic rules of the game and a number of possible alternative moves to beat its opponent on magnetophonic tape.  What happens is that the computer does not forget anything: it has perfect memory.

Throughout life, the brain memorizes a series of data that reach the sensory organs.  Such data increases with age.  But since we are not computers, our brains remember very little of all the information we receive throughout our lives.  This is explained by the following comparison: what we use most often is what we most remember; what we use less frequently, we store in boxes and have trouble remembering.

Thousands of neurons fire simultaneously during certain specific classes of mental activity.  This rhythmically generates a series of electric discharges, called brain waves, which can be recorded by placing electrodes on the scalp and can be amplified by using an amplifier that is connected to a system of pens, graphically representing the information on paper.  This device is called the electroencephalograph and is used to explore the changes that take place in the conscious brain.  The strong, slow and steady line predominates when we sleep, daydream or rest with our eyes closed.  When we are stimulated by sensations or are awake, the line is more rapid and irregular.  Using electroencephalography, we can detect an epileptic focus.  

Brain lesions cause characteristic changes, as do certain emotional states and certain mutations, to the body's metabolism.