Neuroscience
I’ve been reading some books about neuroscience this past week. I’m truly amazed at the complexity of the human brain. When Ed and I were living together, I would sometimes help him study by reading his flash cards to him so he could repeat and elaborate on terms, diseases, or whatever he was studying. In some of his microbiology classes, he talked about a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. At the time I had no idea what this was, but he repeated the word in many of his definitions. The latest book I’m reading has almost three chapters dedicated to acetylcholine as a neurotransmitter. I’m not going to say learning this is easy. I have to look up about every fifth word in the glossary. It’s getting better as I’m starting to see the same words over and over.
It’s funny, all these years I’ve known about histamine blockers, glycine, and other inhibitory conditions, but I’ve never known how they work. I’m psyched to finally be learning this! It’s always amazed me in the back of my mind, in fact I once wanted to major in psychology, but I never really followed through. I’m an engineer at heart. I’m a problem solver.
Human thought has always intrigued me. I said it a lot, but I’ve never really elaborated on it. It amazes me that two people can go through the same thought process and come out to two different conclusions. Think of a calculator. You type in 132 + 104 and hit enter. Every time you do this, the calculator comes up with 236, no matter which calculator you use. No matter how you splice a computer, it always does the same thing. Humans are not like that. We come through different outcomes based on how our brain translates information, and everyone is different! You take two people and give them a problem, they will likely go about solving it in two different ways.
I guess the fact that we don’t know very little about neuroscience is what fascinates me most. It’s a field of discovery and intrigue!