우리의 마음은 어디에 있을까?
고대 그리스 시대에는 마음은 심장에 있다는 생각을 주로 했고 아리스토텔레스 역시 그렇게 생각했다.
지금은 모두가 마음은 뇌에 있다고 알고 있을 것이다.
우리의 삶에서 건강한 신체 만큼이나 중요한 마음 건강, 즉 뇌에 대한 이야기를 소개해본다.
Let's introduce a story about mental health(or brain), which is as important as a healthy body in our lives.
우리의 마음은 바로 뇌라는 것을 기억해야한다.
왜 이렇게 뇌에 관심을 가져야 하는가?
1. 우리 뇌에 생기는 여러 가지 뇌질환을 극복해야 한다.
아직도 우리는 많은 뇌질환들이 왜 생겨나는지 모르고 어떻게 치료해야 할지도 모른다.
특히 나이가 들어가면서 더 쉽게 걸리는 치매 같은 퇴행성 뇌질환은 평균수명이 늘어나면서 큰 사회 문제가 되고있다.
2. 우리 뇌를 모방해서 새로운 인공지능과 컴퓨터를 만들 수 있다.
우리 인간의 뇌는 아주 적은 양의 에너지를 쓰면서도 아주 뛰어난 인지 능력을 발휘할 수 있다.
인간의 오랜 진화 과정 동안에 가장 효율이 높은 컴퓨터로 진화한 결과이며, 인간 뇌의 작동 원리를 모방해서 새로운 인공지능이나 컴퓨터를 개발하면 적은 에너지로 더 뛰어난 성능을 구현할 수 있다.
3. 인간의 뇌에 대해 보다 잘 이해하는 것이 우리 사회와 문화에 큰 영향을 끼칠 수 있다.
다양한 질문들에 대해 어떤 결론이 내려지느냐에 따라 다양한 사회적 문제가 생겨날 수도 있고 반대로 여러 갈등이 해결될 수도 있다.
We experience heart beating when we see someone we like and heartbreaking when we watch sad movies.
Looking at the heartbeat that changes depending on the state of the mind, I think we could have thought that our hearts were really in the heart in the past when medicine was not developed.
As you all know, the ancient Greeks believed in the cardiocentrism that the human mind was in the heart. The representative figure who advocated cardiocentrism is known as the famous Aristotle.
Aristotle argued that the human brain is just an empty organ that controls our body temperature.
But not everyone in ancient Greece believed in cardiocentrism.
Aristotle's teacher, Plato, rather argued that the human soul is in the brain.
Of course, Plato didn't argue for brain-centeredness with special scientific evidence.
He just thought the brain was the center of our human body because the shape of the brain was similar to the shape of the sphere that he thought was geometrically perfect.
It was a Roman medical scientist named Claudius Galenus who put an end to this debate.
Galenos studied the brain by dissecting animals such as goats and pigs.
His greatest achievement is to give people the perception that the brain is an important organ that controls the activity of all organs in the body.
Now everyone knows that the human mind is in the brain.
Not only the sensory organs that we see and feel, but also the activities of the heart, breathing, and colon are all connected to our brains.
But it hasn't been long since these various brain functions were discovered.
In the past, when an accident damaged a specific part of the brain, or when a specific part of the brain was removed through brain surgery, we could see the changes in that person and figure out the function of that part.
Now, many new tools have been developed to study brain science, making it easier to study our brains.
You've heard of MRI, right? MRI is called magnetic resonance imaging in Korean.
In the 1990s, we learned that using this device, we can see not only the precise structure of the brain but also the activity of the brain through images.
But why are we so interested in the brain and doing research?
The first reason is that we have to overcome various brain diseases that occur in our brains.
We still don't know why a lot of brain diseases occur, and we don't know how to treat them.
In particular, degenerative brain diseases such as dementia, which are more easily caught with age, are becoming a big social problem as life expectancy increases.
Dementia is a serious brain disease that affects 20% of the elderly over 80 and 30% of the elderly over 90 years old, but there is no way to treat dementia yet.
The second reason is that we can create new artificial intelligence and computers by imitating our brains.
Our human brain is able to use very little energy, but it's also able to perform very good cognitive abilities.
This is the result of the evolution of humans to the most efficient computers during the long evolutionary process.
So if you develop new artificial intelligence or computers by imitating the working principles of the human brain, you can achieve better performance with less energy.
The third reason is that a better understanding of our human brain can have a great impact on our society and culture.
Depending on what conclusions are made on the various questions, various social problems may arise, and conversely, various conflicts may be resolved.
[Picture source : wordpress.com]
