This Year’s Most Thought-Provoking Brain Discoveries

The human brain can't comprehend itself. The problem of gaining a deep knowledge of the subjective depths of the conscious mind is called the hard problem.

The human brain is able to do many things. Its 100 billion neurons are connected by 100 trillion wirelike fibers that are squeezed into three pounds of squishy flesh. We don't know if this organ will ever be able to hack the physical processes that underlie the "quality of deep blue" or "the sensation of middle C"

A solution to the hard problem may not be found for decades, if ever. There were many solutions to understand the brain that did not require a full explanation of consciousness. The crowd of more than 24,000 people attended the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego in November. The event was a tribute to reductionism. An animal study of a brain circuit that is related to social trauma was reported at the event.

There were many brain discoveries in the year 2022. We published a few picks from what we wrote at Scientific American.

Your Brain Has a Thumbs-Up–Thumbs-Down Switch

Kay was told a chapter on emotion was not appropriate for her thesis. Behavioral neuroscience didn't accept emotion as an important part of the study. That wasn't right to Tye. She decided to do her own research on feelings. A Nature paper co-authored by Tye reported on a type of switch in rodents that can flag an experience as either good or bad. A malfunctioning thumbs-up–thumbs-down switch could explain some cases of anxiety, depression and addiction.

Facial Expressions Do Not Convey What You’ve Been Taught about Someone’s Emotional Demeanor

A smile is a sign of happiness, while a frown is a sign of sadness. Recent research suggests that he was wrong. The investigators found that innate expressions do not exist. A recognition of Darwin's fallacy has implications for artificial intelligence facial recognition systems.

Your Kid May Be a Dandelion and an Orchid—And even a Tulip

Pigeonholing a child is probably not a good idea. The child is not immune to adverse experiences, even if it is an Orchid. Tulips are children who experience small effects from what's happening around them. This floral trio may not be enough. Studies show that many kids are psychological mixes. Sensitivity to some but not all influences around them is what they show.

If You See Something, It May Help You to Say Something

Researchers tried to find out what a curriculum that emphasized the learning of spatial skills would do for children. A map was created to track bears in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The kids at five Virginia high schools took courses, and their performance was matched against another group that didn't have the spatial- learning component. Students in the spatial learning group improved their spatial skills, as well as their verbal skills, according to the results of the research.