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How the Brain 'Constructs' the Outside World | Scientific American

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Neural activity probes your physical surroundings to select just the information needed to survive and flourish BY GYÖRGY BUZSÁKI Stefania Infante A s a young course instructor in seminars for medical students, I faithfully taught neurophysiology by the book, enthusiastically explaining how the brain perceives the world and controls the body. Sensory stimuli from the eyes, ears, and such are converted to electrical signals and then transmitted to the relevant parts of the sensory cortex that process these inputs and induce perception. To initiate a movement, impulses from the motor cortex instruct the spinal cord neurons to produce muscular contraction. Most students were happy with my textbook explanations of the brain's input-output mechanisms. Yet a minority—the clever ones—always asked a series of awkward questions. “Where in the brain does perception occur?” “What initiates a finger movement before cells in the motor cortex fire?” I would always dispatch their queries with a simpl

June 1, 2022 15 min read Add Us On Google Add SciAm How the Brain 'Constructs' the Outside World Neural activity probes your physical surroundings to select just the information needed to survive and flourish By György Buzsáki Stefania Infante A s a young course instructor in seminars for medical students, I faithfully taught neurophysiology by the book, enthusiastically explaining how the brain perceives the world and controls the body. Sensory stimuli from the eyes, ears, and such are converted to electrical signals and then transmitted to the relevant parts of the sensory cortex that proces

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