The Brain

 
     The PBS series "The Brain with David Eagleman" shows how the brain perceives reality, contains our thoughts, emotions, memories, and personality, controls unconscious and conscious actions, coordinates reason and emotion to make decisions, enables social interaction, and gives us the power to design the future.                                                               .
     Eyes receive light, ears receive sound, all our sensors send signals to the brain which makes sense of it all.  We take in what we need to know.  Reality is whatever your brain tells you it is.
     Humans are born helpless taking longer than any other species to become adult, but we have superior power to learn and adapt.  Our brain forms thoughts, emotions, memories, and personality.  Our predetermined genetic schedule enables us to develop and focus.  Throughout our teen years, we learn to make better judgments, control impulses, and avoid unwise risks.  Memories accumulate, fade with time, and are sometimes unreliable.  Our genes, experiences, and memories are unique.  No one like you has ever existed or ever will live again.  Cradle to grave, we are works in progress.
     The brain controls actions, decisions, and beliefs.  Automatic, unconscious operations enable our organs and muscles to function "without thinking."  We consciously organize our thoughts, make choices, and become long-term planners.  Input from our DNA plus our environment of family, friends, and culture combine to form belief systems in our brain.
     Reason and emotion systems work together in the brain.  We place value and prioritize options in order to make decisions.  Our genes pre-program us to be conservative or liberal, to make predictions, and to resist or suppress instant gratification.  Decisions are made in the brain.
     We are social creatures and are wired to help each other.  We learn how to communicate, to judge other people's intentions, and to trust.  Our abilities to form social skills, read body language, and develop empathy reside in the brain.  Belonging to a group promotes comfort and survival; however, identifying with our "in group" (same race, wealth, and religion) can make us not care, avoid, or even dehumanized our "out group."  Propaganda can warp opinions and promote hate of those groups different from our own.  If our species is to survive, we need to care about each other.
     100,000 years ago, humans were primitive hunters and gatherers.  Evolution enabled our brains to have flexibility, to think of multiple things at once.  The brain has plasticity to change and reorganize itself, to learn and remember new things, and to adapt to compensate for lost function in the event of brain injuries.  We still can be fooled by dreams while asleep, but within seconds after we awaken, our brain receives sensory signals, our body functions, we think, remember, and plan.  Humans have invented technologies that can expand the senses, replace body parts, and extend life.  Through computer technology, we have invented artificial intelligence, artificial brains.  Who we become in the future is up to us.