Frank Amthor

Neurobiology has all kinds of real-world (and not so real-world) applications. From curing paralysis to the possibility of cyborgs, neurobiology has answers to many fascinating questions this Cheat Sheet addresses.How can paralysis be cured?Paralysis has multiple causes. The part of the brain that controls movement can be damaged, such as from a stroke.

Since functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machines became more common at the end of the 20th century, there have been more claims about the ability of this technology to extract the content of mental processing. Many aspects of the claims and counterclaims parallel those associated with so-called “lie detector” tests during their heyday in the late 20th century, including the ability to detect lying itself.

As computers become more powerful, there is increasing speculation about whether they could equal or surpass human intelligence. One thread in this discussion is the idea of downloading our minds into an artificial substrate such as a computer. Most neuroscientists are very skeptical about this idea for a few reasons: What we actually know about the brain is that it’s extremely complex.

Cyborgs (cybernetic organisms) already exist! Any one of the more than 100,000 people worldwide who has a cochlear implant to restore hearing is essentially a cyborg, a functional combination of organic and machine parts. Your Great-Aunt Gertie suddenly seems much cooler, doesn’t she? The real question is how rapidly additional brain functions will be carried out with brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and how quickly they’ll be developed.

Paralysis has multiple causes. The part of the brain that controls movement can be damaged, such as from a stroke. Injuries and diseases can interrupt the message transmitted from the brain to the muscles. But treatment and research are helping, and rapid advances in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are making these science-fiction–sounding approaches feasible in the near future: Rehabilitation and training help in all types of paralysis by strengthening pathways and recruiting alternate ones to bypass the injury.

Although not located in the skin, receptors mediating proprioception (position sense) and kinesthesis (movement sense), are either free nerve endings or structures similar to mechanoreceptors like Ruffini corpuscles (refer to the first figure below) and have similar layouts as the cell bodies in the dorsal root ganglia (refer to the second figure).

Why is Neuroscience important? The most complex structure in the world is the 3-pound mass of cells within your skull called the brain.The brain consists of about 100 billion neurons, which is about the same number as all the stars in our Milky Way galaxy and the number of galaxies in the known universe. It also contains about a trillion glial cells, which contribute to the proper function of neurons.

Although pain is a necessary function for preventing damage to the body, in some cases, pain itself becomes disabling. Chronic pain can occur in disease conditions such as cancer, in which case the normal function of pain that forces you to rest, protect, or not use some injured part of the body until it heals is simply inappropriate in a disease state in which destruction is occurring from the cancer all over the body that cannot be healed from rest.

Knowing the four lobes of the brain is important for neuroscience. The neocortex is divided into four major lobes: the frontal lobe, the parietal lobe, the temporal lobe, and occipital lobe. These lobes are further divided into different regions. The frontal lobes are involved with control of movement, from stimulation of individual muscles to abstract planning about what to do.