The Origin of the Human Mind: Brain Imaging and Evolution

[Evilrolfharris]

Maybe the killer whale is training us to fee it fish?

[Evilrolfharris]

@Evilrolfharris Feed*

[jdoc1350]

Hello. Great lecture. Interesting how he suggests that spatial awareness and language are similar timeline contructs. I'm currently doing my basic brain anatomy and have noticed that the hemisphere's are relatively symmetrical, for example the homunculi represented on it's surfaces. Except, that is, spatial awareness and language,which are associated with the left and right respectively.

[tokotokotoko3]

Here is a nice counter-talk by Chomsky: watch?v=2v6XFkSwVys

I think he would find the approach interesting - especially the part where the language was not invented for communication. Then again in the talk he describes lots of properties that are so specific to humans, that slow evolution alone can't explain it.

[2011rhythmdivine]

The brain too underwent an evolution. Thanks to Darwin! Thanks to modern efforts to explain such.

[Battery9876]

What's the name of the song at the end?

[Valdegg]

UC TV is so much more intellectually stimulating and less depressing than normal TV!

[qwertypluss]

I currently do research in the overlap between

Neuroscience, computing and engineering

Neuroscience and information theory

Neuroscience and economics.

And it's the most interesting thing I've ever done. My day pretty much consists of reading this and then thinking up things to research. I strongly recommend anybody interested in these fields to do a PhD and get into research.

You'll never do a day of work in your life.

[AAAjMMMiRRR]

@qwertypluss A question for you: can you imagine an ANN that can feel pain or pleasure? What 'feel' pain or pleasure in us?

[qwertypluss]

@AAAjMMMiRRR Behaviourally, easily but one that experiences pain and pleasure who knows; first, we have to solve a more fundamental problem, whether it'spossible an ANN to experience consciousness.

[AAAjMMMiRRR]

@qwertypluss I'm an electronic engineer and I found the ANN very fascinating during my studies. Yes, can ANN experience consciousness or does it need something else?

[qwertypluss]

@AAAjMMMiRRR We don't even know what consciousness is my friend! It's an ongoing problem.

Out of curiosity, what did you study in electronic engineering which including ANNs?

[AAAjMMMiRRR]

@qwertypluss I got to know these stuffs mostly from reading but my final year project was on speech recognition. I used a training algorithm derived from ANN.

[emy601000]

how the brain is built will be a secret untill we research like Martin

[rickgigliotti]

Cornerstone Television CTV channel 40 TV Wall PA (ctvn) has a good "Origins" program

[johnspartan98]

This guy puts me to sleep. Sheesh. Make learning exciting and use some creativity. Yawn.

[dirtydonki]

@johnspartan98 As much as this subject interests me I have to agree this guy's presentation skills suck on a large one.

[bharadrm]

Science studies cause and effect. We try to study the consequences of certain activity. Here in the study of the mind and brain it is done. After seeing the effect we are trying to find out causer. Brain only a machine used by consciousness, i.e. causer. We can find out some relationship between, this may not be true always. That is the reason free will comes into picture. Consciousness has free will, whereas brain does not have. The consciousness is fascinating than brain, independent of brain.

[andrewada]

Chimpanzees have poor vocal control. Interesting. Maybe it suggests that vocal sounds in a Chimpanzee are overwhelmingly about communicating emotion, which is also what the uncontrolled component in speech performs in us humans.

[andrewada]

Sexual selection must be rooted in what is practical because otherwise sexual selection itself, as a function, would not have evolved. Sexual selection cannot lead to notably impractical things: A prospective mate that is attracted to "inefficient" things will not survive in the competition for life.

[TJBarba777]

Brain is nearly four times larger than our "supposive" closest living relatives the chimpanzees. I am sorry but the only explanation for that is a designer.

[UltraAnalisis]

who is training who? the wale has a biguer brain but is more stupid then human, i think size really means who is smarther, the elefant and wales have a superior social inteligence, intellygency? there is too mucho more inteligency's to find and understand, who is smarther just because we have hands make us smarther,,,, why some insects can create impresive home,,

[MightyXee]

coonelss and itnriguing

[XCHAPYEG]

God sure did work hard devising the human mind.

*prepares to jumped on*

[Icubaybee]

very good

[slartibartfats]

I would suggest that size and folding are important factors, that the killer whale has a much greater potential intelligence than a human. We have the advantage of a more challenging environment and highly versatile hands through which we've manipulated our world building up a complex technology over some couple of hundred thousand years. Dolphins generally have more fun, though :)

[nynono]

When man evolved it was the biggest misstake nature ever made.

[CCSofChocolatesvill]

Humans evolve through time genetically and Physically so does our conciousness thoughts and perception so you could say we are the future- but in thousand years the chemistry of the human brain will be active in many other areas than it is now, to the point where we will be communicating via telepathy and sharing imagery with others Just by the power of the mind and the Bipolar community are the ones on the cusp of the next transition.

[teleomorph]

Great talk! (The title's a bit bold though ;)

[georgemargaris]

check out serenos webpage on ucsd. great stuff. he even has some nice mp3s of his eguitar music. And a great blog

[dharmanova]

thanks for posting this vid! I loved it.

There aren't enough of solid educational videos on utube. Particularly dealing with evolutionary neurophysiology...

[kgeorge1967]

Regarding language that does not mean anything and yet being attractive to the opposite sex: this reminds me of the common day pop/rock musician--perhaps a modern day analog.

[tryanjohnson]

Absolutely amazing. I love UC TV.

[doonymacc]

greed. greed is the only difference

[mixxyovilson3]

THEN WE WILL "SEE"

[mixxyovilson3]

then the 1st methods of visual communication will begin in the mind.

[mixxyovilson3]

once it becomes comman sence we will see it work.

[mixxyovilson3]

it needs to be comman sence.

[mixxyovilson3]

thats "how it works"

its a good discovery

tune in .

[mixxyovilson3]

its just not comman knowledge until sum1 prooves its worth.

you should KNOW by now what i was thinking in the past this way.

[mixxyovilson3]

if you see it you think it .

just do it.

[mixxyovilson3]

i might write a good book about it once they get the point.

[mixxyovilson3]

its a good "discovery" that could revolutionise the way we can communicate visually & audibly through the education of the relevance theory & my own version of it. Its easy my way.

[mixxyovilson3]

the illuminati have the rite idea. lots of visual communication through mediums of communication i.e T.V/Radio. triangles prompt the mind in a relevant way. EYE's too. thats what i see & how i see it.

[mixxyovilson3]

The relevance theory is the correct approach to all this. it just needs educating on a visual/audible level that prompts the mind to think a certain way.

[mixxyovilson3]

you will SEE sence eventually

[mixxyovilson3]

its the truth.

[mixxyovilson3]

you crack it. il just proove my point.

[Isamright33]

for all those who want to know what the brain is, well it's a terminal that connects life to another layer...let me explain, our feet connect us to the ground, and our brain connects us to the lofty air around us....that is the brains function, which is not a humans function, a brain was made for humans, humans did not make a brain.

[Isamright33]

you will never find the origin of the mind, an origin is a place of origination, an donly physical things manifest in an origin, things which are not tangible, abstract, have no origin, only the word origin is used as a metaphor to describe beginings, but man will never know beginning or end, those things do not exist, they are human concepts for communication purposes.

[aburling7]

Regardless of the terminology issue ("mind"), the subject matter is fascinating and his knowledge of it immense. His style and delivery is pleasently digested. Whether or not he is accurate on every single point, I find his interpretation of the evidence much more plausible than say, the instantaneous appearance of complete, intact animals and/or the Noah's Ark story.

[ulysse2121]

These neuroscience guys should stop using the word "mind" so much in their titles. For me they just explain how they brain processes eg. visual input. Is this the definition of the mind. In my opinion mind is not equal with brain. At least not equal with that rudimentary understanding of the brain that contemporary neuroscience is offering.

[TheSurfrack]

i think thats why the video is called Brain Imaging and Evolution. brain

[ulysse2121]

A lot a fancy pictures, but not really explaining what the mind actually is.

[Megandicks]

WOw this video was awesome! It's so interesting to think that language perhaps developed due to sexual selection. Perhaps we still/ I know we still select mates based on how well they speak thats why so many girls like men with foriegn accents LOL Ahahah

[djzacmaniac]

PLEASE READ!!!Aoccdrnig to rseerach at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

PS: Hwo'd yuo lkie to run tihs by yuor sepll ckehcer?

[Isamright33]

actually they are wrong. I just read what you wrote and I feel nautious....please for the love of god, do not make people try and figure out what you wrote by doing this, just stick to what we know, that every letter in a word matters.

[mystisme]

@djzacmaniac very good even thow english is not my primaty language i see what you mean and i agree with you cause i did this experience years ago in french and yes we read as a hole

[kiribula]

@djzacmaniac old stuff

[XCHAPYEG]

@djzacmaniac That's pretty fucking awesome lol

[junkvideoviewer]

@djzacmaniac

I read your messed up research results. I did recognize the spelling mistakes and corrected them myself to make sense of. Just because I corrected your mistakes does not mean I did not catch them. If my job was grading your spelling, I would give you a zero (and then be amazed at how stupid researchers' interpretations of data can be). Depending on how 'mindful' your mind is, you could read "every letter" of a word and then make necessary corrections.

[djzacmaniac]

@junkvideoviewer You could read it before making any corrections. That is the point. I'm not ant-spelling. You are not special, and your brain CAN interpret the message with jumbled spelling just like most every other English speaking person. Spelling is a task mastered in elementary school, so to try and take some kind of high ground, by "correcting" "mistakes" is ridiculous. Comprehension must not be your strong suit. The misspelling is purposeful for the effect that is created. DUH!

[junkvideoviewer]

@djzacmaniac You seem very dull witted person. It is not my brain that is correcting spellings, I did that mindfully. In other words, I am not mindful of your spelling mistakes. At my will, I could catch spelling mistakes or ignore them, all the while having exactly the same brain. Why do you attribute every ability to just brain? Get your brain imaging technology and test a mindful person: Both when reading correctly and reading out senseless sounds. Did they do that test? THAT IS GOOD SCIENCE.

[djzacmaniac]

@junkvideoviewer Pseudo-intellectual mental masturbation. Eat me.

[sueyking]

@junkvideoviewer you missed the whole point.

[djzacmaniac]

@sueyking You mind is held in different spots of your BRAIN!!! Our minds are amazing BECAUSE OUR BRAINS are amazing. Do YOU get it now?

[hate420breed]

@djzacmaniac No that means that you are memorizing imperfections which makes you a fool, I bet you think of yourself as some sort of artist don't you?

[djzacmaniac]

@hate420breed Who memorized anything? I copy and pasted that paragraph.

[kaustubhdatar]

@djzacmaniac

ncie cmmonets!

[datazndood]

@djzacmaniac That was awesome, thanks!

[Megatronicful]

@djzacmaniac that is awesome 

[albatross1977]

So how does Noam Chomsky's theory fit into this, which says that we are preprogramed with a language syntax? That goes against this guy's theory that language started out as having nothing to say.

[IRBucephalus]

Well, Chomsky is very well respected for all his seminal contributions to cognitive science, but by what we know today he was wrong on most of his assumptions.

The problem is that he was operating at a very logical-hypothetical basis at the 60s when he came up with his theory, and evidence from modern empirical research shows different trends in the origins of language and its acquisition.

Not to diminish his work though, it was quite influential and important for the advancements in the field

[albatross1977]

Do you know where I can learn more about that?

[IRBucephalus]

Well, pretty much all the psychologists and neuroscientists from UCSD defend this theory of language, so check out their work.

Also check out the videos of Jeffrey Elman and Annette Karmiloff-Smith here on YouTube, in this UCTV account. They talk about this take on how language developed from a "connectivist" perspective.

[jedimasterbooboo]

Chomsky Rules. He's got evidence, not a "just so" story. Just my humble *cough cough* opinion.

[Scott62895]

1 hour

[StarryNightBluesBand]

I am filled with joy, like a hot-blooded man encountering a bejeweled woman of majestic beauty in a solitary place ... he honors the precepts of chastity ... but in the face of her radiance cannot even wish to move a single step away from her ... when, like an enchanting beauty adorned with jewels of compassion, the story of the Master's liberation reached the ears of this fortunate seeker, I was filled with joy ... now i share the feast of this wonderful and glorious story ~ Life of Milarepa

[icecreamrulz420ya]

this video focuses on trivial parts of how your brain works and what tech they have. It by no means goes into what the title of this video is called, but it gives little new insites on how language developed.

[mrfatd]

most contemporary philosphers, like campbell, searle, fodor etc are soo ignorant of true philosophy, their philosphy compared to that of kant is like scholasticism to aristotle. they write mad non-sense about freedom of will, artificial intelligence and brain states even though most of these 'problems' they try to solve have been long ago solved by kant, heidegger and others. they just dont read anything

[Nades129]

Thank you soooo much uc... damn, it makes me wanna steal money from the bank and enroll at uc

[yippittydoda]

be careful.  HOmeland Security is listening. tee hee even in berkeley. it just aint the place it used to be. take it from me. i live here. it is now a police city//state... Task Gone Wild

[Nades129]

LMFAO...

i'll try not to expose my plans

[AlexTube2006]

Brilliant!

[rudy4histo]

I love neuroscience but Jesus this is slow and monotonous sounding...

[Jianju69]

Fascinating! Thank you!

[BenjaminFranklin2u]

Your inability to form a complete sentence pretty much sums up your opinion of any academic presentation.

[Jianju69]

Ayeyermaa: Perfectly ok if you've no enthusiasm for cognitive science, (there's plenty of variety here,) but WHY must you be so coarse & rude?

[Mariposa2775837]

yeah, very very interesting, post more!!

[paziraii]

awesome.keep up the good work uctv.