‘Why can I say the number literally?’ River of Babylon By Boney M, but does not list all the items from the periodic table? asks the editor in chief Andrei. Neuroscientists can not answer this question either.
At KIJK Editors, we deal with information every day. We research, take notes and report on what we think our readers benefit from. And with a little luck, all this knowledge is processed and stored in the most special tool we have: our brain. But research into exactly how this substance works under the roof of our skull is a bit stagnant. Every time science thinks it knows how the brain works, the brain thinks differently about it. You can read all about it in the wonderful story of Ronald Feldhuizen.
radial Corneal Incision
My brain recognizes a lot of itself in that story. If you wake me up in the middle of the night – which by the way I do not recommend – I can literally say the number River of Babylon Vum Boney M Sing Along. (And for the record: I hate it River of Babylon Bonnie M.) I’m just collecting the names of all the actors who played James Bond, and I can tell you that in the early 1970’s a Russian invented a vision correction technique called Radial Keratomileusis.
“There could also have been useful information,” I sometimes say to my brain. In the place where the name of George Lazenby is now stored, it could also be the order of the planets in our solar system, or something with which I understand for example mathematics, or all the elements of the periodic table.
I read in Ronald’s article that the brain does not work that way. There is no computer in which information is stored in fixed places. “It’s like reopening your laptop a week later and then discovering that all the files on your computer have been shredded and mixed up,” says Francesco Battaglia of Radboud University in Nijmegen, among others. However, this great operating system continues to work.
It’s a shame the comparison to a computer is not correct because I was secretly hoping for some sort of biological delete button I would use Yes, we cried as we remembered Zion can delete. Anyway, read Ronald’s story. This is good for your brain.
Attention: If I give you another tip, listen to our podcast with Diederik Jekel on Kijkmagazine.nl/podcast.
This edition is also available on KIJK 4/2022, order here.
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