Christof Koch - What Do Brains Do?

What are the functions of brains? What kinds of activities do brains do? How are the multiple activities of brains integrated, so that animals act in organized manners and pursue integrated goals? Considering the remarkable capacities of brains, they are astoundingly small. Most watermelons weigh more.



Christof Koch is an American neuroscientist best known for his work on the neural bases of consciousness.


Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[Bushido]

i underestimated harrison ford, the man's a genius!

[jareknowak]

Wow, this episode was truly full of interesting information.

[shanezanath]

I love his book The Feeling of Life Itself. Being fascinated with consciousness, and getting a range of ideas, the works of Anil Seth, Giulio Tononi, Stanislas Dehaene, Sam and Annika Harris, Phillip Goff, Chalmers, and Dennett have all been interesting (particularly Seth's Beast Machine theory or Tononi's IIT). But I've more recently loved the ideas of Antonio Damasio! His ideas of homeostasis and the importance of neurotransmitters are something that tend to be mentioned very little in consciousness research. But it seems neurotransmitters must play a crucial role in consciousness. Just think about how vastly different consciousness feels by small changes in our endocrinology!

[overthebar]

I play these videos really loud on the tv, so the neighbours think I'm really clever. They are always coming around, asking me for advice about different things.

[heath]

FantasticI couldn’t be happier for finding this show called closer to the truth

[superjaykramer]

I LOVE THIS GUY..TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE!

[notinterested]

I found the title amusing, good start.

[taylormorrison]

didnt realize harrison ford knew so much about the brain

[patmat.]

Super interesting, thank you. The brain might be even more amazing than consciousness itself.

[metoo]

like you Brain abled us to and most significant result of have the chance where no other creature on earth collective gave us the edge and superiority.

[anthonycraig]

In the most simplest terms, for the entity to differentiate between its self and the outside and take necessary action from its input sensors.

[veer]

What I think is brain is just a signal receiver and signal sender and all storing is outside our brain .It's the matching frequency which that's in and out of brain.

[voiceinthewilderness]

Do you think the “code” in everyone is the same? Not everyone thinks the same way. People think in different languages.

[cvsree]

Brain is the seat for Mind.

Mind is kind of energy that arises from consciousness. Pure consciousness is God.

We live in a lower form of consciousness polluted with thoughts. We can practice Yoga/meditation to get to perfect stillness of mind - Nirvana - or Self realisation.

[-by-_Publishing_LLC]

(4:30) *CK: **_"As far as we can tell, brains are the most complex form of organized matter in the universe."_* ... There is a reason for this. Existence (consciousness) equals "all information." For 13.8 billion years, Existence has extrapolated all of the information associated with inanimate structure. Existence always pushes forward, so inanimate structure evolved into sentient, self-aware humans in order to generate more information.

Our brains represent CPUs residing inside eight billion information-generating workstations all tied into a single server known as "Consciousness." We now collect, process, and assimilate all of the data Existence collected over the past 13.8 giga annum and assign value. Every definition, value, construct, song, painting, poem, invention, and all other information we generate is "new information" that gets added to the collective database of consciousness.

Yes, consciousness (information) exists _outside_ of our brains while simultaneously generating more consciousness (information) from _inside_ of our brains.

[breno]

Ultimately, the supreme aim is not survival, it is sharing. Trees don't exist to be trees, they exist to live interdependently with the forest.

[georgegrubbs]

The brain also creates new actions, including ideas, based on imagination, that results in the analysis, synthesis, and extrapolation of on-board information and that creates feedback loops.

[jamesruscheinski]

What happens when in neuron activity when brain computes output?

[johnyharris]

Is it any wonder we have not figured out how consciousness arises from the brain when we are faced with such vastly complicated arrangment of matter, of a kind that nothing of its like has been found in the universe. 4 billion synapses in a grain of rice alone and we are dealing with an organ that weighs on average 1.3kg. The 'hard problem' is an understatement.

[jamesruscheinski]

Does the human brain use time in computations, and does the use of time for computation by the brain show up in neuron activity?