THE BRAIN
The brain is the central control of our body: it regulates all the processes that take place in our body, both voluntary and involuntary, such as heartbeat, breathing, body movements, thought and speech, and so on. Man has the largest brain of all Primates (monkeys) and certainly has superior cognitive ability.
THE BRAIN
But his intelligence is not attributable to the size of the brain, but rather to its connections and some particular genes. In the animal world, in fact, the human brain is certainly not the largest: just think of that of whales or dolphins, much larger than ours. Or even to all those species - like many birds - that have a much more voluminous brain, in proportion to the size of the body, compared to us humans.
EXHIBIT "THE TIGHTROPE"
One of the fundamental tasks that pertain to the peripheral nervous system, for example, is to keep us standing, in balance. Staying in balance may seem easy, but it's not.
The brain must coordinate intense electrical traffic between the centers of movement in the back of the brain (cerebellum) and the arms, legs, eyes, ear balance centers and other sensors scattered around the body. All these complicated operations performed by the nervous system - central and peripheral - are possible thanks to particular cells: neurons, which constitute the "basic unit" of the nervous system. But how are these neurons made?
EXHIBIT NEURONS
Like any other cell, the neuron has a cell body - called a soma - which contains the nucleus, cytoplasm and other organelles found in all cells of the human body. But unlike all the other cells that make up the human body, it has the ability to form circuits and networks, connecting with other neurons. How? Thanks to a series of extensions that start from the soma: many dendrites and only one axon.
EXHIBIT TABLE OF NEURONS
Neurons can take different shapes and sizes: that of an elongated spindle, of a star with many branches or even that of a pyramid. But whatever their form, their function remains identical: to communicate, to create a dense network of message exchange.
It is thanks to these connections between neurons that every action, every memory, every thought is brought to an end.Like the whole nervous system, the brain is also formedby neurons connected by synapses.There are about 100 billion neurons in the human brain, the most important organ of the nervous system, which is found in the skull.
"CHIMPANZEE VS HUMAN"
The visitor is invited to perform a memory test against a chimpanzee, with multiple difficulty levels. Various numbers are displayed on the screen and asked to memorize the numbers and their position. By touching the first number, all the others disappear. And the visitor must touch the points where the other numbers have been distributed, reconstructing the right order from 1 to 5. At the same time, the visitor can see how quickly his "opponent" (a chimpanzee) is doing this test. In 99% of cases the chimpanzee will win: the chimpanzees' ability to memorize a sequence is in fact superior to that of men. According to the researchers, in order to evolve, man sacrificed some areas of the brain dedicated to photographic memory, assigning them to other tasks, such as language development.
"THE POKER GAME"
The visitor sits at a virtual poker table, with 3 virtual players and has a virtual budget of material goods and money that he can use in a game game known as the "three card game". The visitor begins to play, losing more often than he wins: in reality the game is rigged specifically to stimulate the unconscious phenomenon of "loss tracking", ie the desire to compensate losses with potential gains. The visitor thus learns how gambling, becoming compulsive, can lead to progressive dizzying economic and family disasters. This is because our brains are not good at assessing risk.
"HOW MANY LIGHTS CAN YOU TURN OFF IN 60 SECONDS?"
On a large wall are installed several light bulbs, each connected to a switch using a chaotic network of cables. When a light comes on, the visitor must find the right button to turn it off as quickly as possible. The goal is to turn off as many lights as possible in 60 seconds! The exhibit has the function of stimulating the visitor's short-term memory, helping him in the game when the lights start to light up faster. At the end of the game, there is a statistic that shows how well the visitor did the task in relation to the performances of the other visitors. The information can be stored in the short-term memory between 18 and 30 seconds, then disappear. If, on the other hand, the information is intended as part of a structure, it can become part of the working memory and can eventually be sent to the long-term memory.
Corporea - Interactive museum of human body
By: Fondazione Idis - Città della Scienza
