• Question: if your brains are just a mishmash of boichemistry how come chemicals like gasoline or bug spray can`t think??

    Asked by nicenadia to Alessandro, Angela, Claudia, Marina, Phil on 9 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Marina De Vos

      Marina De Vos answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      They do not have the neurons that brains have. You need a specific type of chemical components and processes for thinking.

    • Photo: Alessandro Guazzi

      Alessandro Guazzi answered on 10 Mar 2013:

      Your brains are (luckily!) not just a mish-mash of biochemistry! The fundamental units of the brain are the neuron cells, and it is when these cells work together that you can think!
      Scientists are now trying to work out the effects of different neurons working together, and one project which is doing this in the most spectacular way possible is the Blue Brain Project, in which they are trying to create a virtual brain! As they say, this is really difficult because “each neuron is the equivalent of a laptop computer” (http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/cms/lang/en/pid/56882)

    • Photo: Phillip Wilkinson

      Phillip Wilkinson answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      Great question! If you think about it as well, our brains and gasoline and bug spray are just made from atomic particles. So we are made of atoms, and we know we are made of atoms. So we are atoms who are aware of themselves; why aren’t others?

      Then you can question what it means to ‘think’. You could say when we think about our favorite food its just the firing of electricity and release of specific chemicals in our brain. So it could just be that other chemicals don’t have the capacity to hold, and transmit electricity and specific chemicals.

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