Finally, Crash Course takes a slight turn into the more "psychological" part of psychology. No more math or biology, or at least not as much that makes my brain mad with rage or cry tears of sadness. Either way, this episode was much more enjoyable than the last couple.
We had just gone over phrenology in Learning & Plasticity, so that short mention in this video was pretty nice. I was really intrigued in the story about Phineas Gage who had a rod struck through the front of his head and then came out the back, and he was apparently still conscious enough to get up and walk to some passerbys to tell them what happened. He eventually healed despite coughing up pieces of brain, however his personality had taken a mysterious turn as he could no longer process compassion and other emotions as he could before. But this is still a pretty vague issue, and I wish they had more information about it. Not that I'm a sucker for this kind of gore stuff, but yeah maybe I am. It's just amazing to me that your head and brain can be totally struck through and not only are you not dead, but you can still function. Somewhat. For a little while.
The rest of the video goes through the different regions of the brain, frontal lobe, parietal lobe, etc. It was a good review, and this is the kind of biology that I don't dislike.
One particularly interesting video comment was:
Which of the following is correct: 1. I have a brain. or 2. I am a brain.
Most of the replies to this consisted of Both, Neither, or Third option. It's a pretty vague question overall, but it makes you think, seeing as the answer could be one or the other depending on how you look at it. "I have a brain" is instinctly what you think. But "I am a brain" could be a valid alternative if you can argue what the meaning of "I" is. Personally, I don't really have a concrete answer to this question. I could argue for both sides, but I'll probably use option 1 most of the time for the sake of convenience.
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