{"id":35277,"date":"2013-03-21T06:25:36","date_gmt":"2013-03-21T10:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetsave.com\/?p=35277"},"modified":"2013-03-21T06:25:36","modified_gmt":"2013-03-21T10:25:36","slug":"brain-waves-show-that-area-specific-understanding-of-brain-function-is-too-rigid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/articles\/brain-waves-show-that-area-specific-understanding-of-brain-function-is-too-rigid\/","title":{"rendered":""Brain Waves" Show That Area-Specific Understanding Of Brain Function Is Too Rigid"},"content":{"rendered":"

The modern scientific understanding of how brains function has primarily been based around area-specific associations — when you talk the “speech” area of the brain is activated, etc. But now, new research on “brain waves” is shedding further light on how the brain actually works. While it has been known for quite some time that a function isn’t really tied to one location, and that the brain is essentially very plastic with different regions being able to do more or less any function, the new work adds to that, showing that the entire cortex is activated during more or less any task. And interestingly, the activity “occurs in a pattern: waves of activity roll from one side of the brain to the other.”<\/p>\n

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This matches up very well with the view of the brain as being, primarily, an integrative system. A system that takes stimuli and incorporates it into its own “actions”.<\/p>\n

“The brain can be studied on various scales,” researcher David Alexander explains: “You have the neurons, the circuits between the neurons, the Brodmann areas \u2013 brain areas that correspond to a certain function \u2013 and the entire cortex. Traditionally, scientists looked at local activity when studying brain activity, for example, activity in the Brodmann areas. To do this, you take EEG’s (electroencephalograms) to measure the brain\u2019s electrical activity while a subject performs a task and then you try to trace that activity back to one or more brain areas.”<\/p>\n