Rama - Take the Neuron Express for a brief tour of consciousness 

Here is a real scientist doing real science work, but also has the elegance to explain the complex work, so any average Joe can understand it. We need more scientists like Ramachandran, particularly in the neuro-science, medical realm.

"Translating magic into science." I love this phrase!

It's so good to see he recognizes the students in his lab who have done the experiments

This doctor is ahead of our time. Neuro theology and inner geometry. 👍

"science is a love affair with nature." I love this!

Dr.Rama is the best!

I like Mr. V.S. Ramachandran's talks. He explains complex things in a very lucid way for non-technical people. Brain, Mind, Consciousness, Neurons are very complex and fascinating topics. Thank You, Mr. V.S. Ramachandran.

Great guy who knows history of science and mathematics as well

Brilliant!

Way of expressing super

i am one of the fan of dr ramachandran since i learn abt fantom limb phenomenon

Interesting guy to listen to

I like Rama 👍

Genius

I have always been of the mind that, if you can't make a concept relate-able to the common man then your idea may not yet be complete. It's somewhat like the Rchard Feyman "What I cannot create I cannot understand. Reduction and re-assembly, then stand back and ask the world, "OK, how did I do?"

What a fantastic end comment 😂 True inspiration VS

Wrt to function of self is also to limit utilization of brain resources..like number of functions or computations . Because there are resources to do millions of functions but when self comes into picture the focus gets put on liking and interest of self and hence resources are conserved

My comment should correct the word ago to age.Wonder why am reminded of this piece as I was singing in the temple thinking of my father surrounded by some of his blood relatives and my living younger brother and my wife as he was born a century ago in 1915? wonder what make our mind able to fly from moment in space of time and place at a fraction of time and random field theory any use in mapping activities of and in the brain? Another food for thought.

Awesome! You should watch " WTF Bending Mans Mind ". Such a great video.

Check out: Professor Marcus du Sautoy, in Horizon's: The Secret You. You can find it here on youtube.

about the "readiness potential", I'm confused too because at once he said it happens half a second earlier than the action and then again he said it happens 30 seconds earlier

WTF is up with the interviewer constantly messing with his microphone?

It makes a lot of sense that consciousness is heavily related to or dependent on language.

39:10 Synesthetes seeing the two immediately - does that mean that number-colour synestesia is somehow involved with peripheral vision?

With Rama's cultural historicity of 'Nowness', I wonder whether he twigged to his idea of showing the subject his bran scan of what he was about to do so he could exercise his 'won't-will option and not to do... with the double-slit quantum experiment which highlights the same phenomena in a parallel sense as metaphor. Now-consciousness creates a duplicity of similars which alters normal cognition and outcome.

I never saw that movie, but yes, I think the entire mysteries of the human brain would perhaps never be solved, . .. on the other hand, even if they are almost completely solved down to the very last neuron, it would still never take away the depth and profundity of the subjective experience .. . its like you reading the ingredients of ice cream, and you know what goes in there, but you still enjoy every bit of it

Thank goodness he has mentioned Indians regarding mathematics etc. I can detect a kind of Scottish accent coming through VS. He sounds a bit like Sean Connery now and again.

Francis Crick & Christof Koch

referring to his thoughts at 1:46:30 ... topics on recycling could be boring for kids, but isn't it the need of the hour to put it in a textbook?

Maybe somebody can help me out @ 56-57 mins he mentions a few names I found it hard to understand who he is talking about? and in the captions if you look has the same problem, if is funny I talk to Indian people everyday at work and still hard???? thanks uploader good vid VS explains himself and his thoughts very well

Amazing how the brain works: One lecture somebody called him Rama And I thought - there must be an interesting story behind how he got this nickname So then I found a video thumbnail with a picture of him and "Rama" in the title. I clicked, thinking - I might get the answers here. And then it came to me - Rama is short for Rama-chandran! Amazing how the brain works. When it works.

Wireless control of Drosophila flies.

History of math which he states Arabic is derived from Aramaic. Assyrians have created the mathematic system which was translated by Ashur Banipal.

"The problem is... you have a bunch of pretty scans of the brain, and they think it tells you about behavior.... it doesn't" - Dr. Carl Hart in 2014, neuroscientist and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Columbia University school of Medicine

mirror neurons

I wonder how the Egyptians built the pyramids with a sharp precision without having the zero in mind

I was told by my late father when I was 5 years ago that he was going to educate me as an engineer which he did and I went to become an engineering scholar but he died while I was working in Singapore in 1978 on water project. If brain is a jelly I doubt if one can give individual areas for various activites such as in frontal lobe, temporal lobe ,parietal lobe, occipital lobe .If billions of neurons of the whole brain are involved , and if imaging only show areas of activity say thinking on the surface of frontal lobe does not mean that other areas or space are not involved. Food for thought.

Looks and sounds like Neil Degrass Tyson.

The self is literally self-created. An internal image created of self by self. Extremely circular. Self image containing the very image . . . like the Morton's Salt box having an image of a Morton's Salt box which contains . . . to infinity. I know what it is like to be conscious. I have a self-image of what it is like to be conscious. I can generate what-if images of degrees of consciousness. I can imagine having a conversation with a sleep walker who appeared conscious, but he doesn't remember it. There is a relationship between consciousness and memory. I was unconscious due to pentothol . . . a slice of consciousness excised. If another's memory is very, very good I might say they are very, very conscious. The unreachable limit: Every step taken, every mistake, every triumph at hand. Every experience including the first recalled from memory on command. O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! -- Robert Burns, To A Louse

Interviewer's microphone is destroying the video. Soo annoying and unprofessional

Odd as it might sound, what if you only become conscious of your own free will choice after you have made the free will choice. That is to say, you always live in your own past. Think about this a bit and how neurology actually works and it's not such a far-fetched idea. Ramachandran speaks of a certain smearing of space time perception which I think, if taken apart, would look something like what I'm talking about.

I think its not a question of "how fast?" . .. Its about external and internal . .. as soon as you know the entire map of the determined events, they no longer remain determined because you have the ability to change your mind and do the opposite . .. but this is valid when talking about micro events, because the big picture could remain unchanged whether you move your left arm or your right arm . .. so, in my view the big picture is almost completely determined

11:22 Why tha hell did he flip him off?

wrg

"on the other hand, even if they are almost completely solved down to the very last neuron, it would still never take away the depth and profundity of the subjective experience ." Not only does it not take away, it completely fails to explain anything. Consciousness has been shown to exist independent of brain, when patients in surgery have zero neuro activity, they relate experiences in detail. Consciousness cannot arise from mere mechanical flesh brains.

we have free will, pure and simple it makes no difference whether some machine can capture what we do BEFORE we do it all that tells me is that electronics is more precise than our cognitive thought the only way the machine can tell the difference between me reaching out my hand and picking the banana versus picking the apple is that there is some sort of difference in my brain waves between the two choices. and that the machine, which has been hooked up on me before, is now smart enough to know the difference. the machine works in time frames of neurons firing. when i think about my conscious decision, i am thinking in seconds. did i choose this second, that second, or 2 seconds ago ? when compared to microseconds, i can be more than a million times more inaccurate. so bottom line is that it is ludicrous to try and compare the two !! and the most bottom line is that the computer did not know what i was gonna pick UNTIL AFTER MY BRAIN MADE MY CHOICE FOR ME. and there was some cognitive time delay between that event and my conscious awareness of the event. if i put a gun to your head and tell you to pick the apple, you are gonna pick the apple. if i put a gun to your head and tell you to pick the banana, you are gonna pick the banana. if we truly had no free will and no choice mechanisms, then in one of those situations, we would get killed. because either we have no free will and will always pick the apple. or no free will, and always pick the banana. you cant have it both ways. i find all this determinism a bunch of silliness. and something that all these intelligent people should know better

neil degrasse tyson's cousin..!

His mouth moves vertically as well as laterally at the same time.😂😂😂😂😂

I've never seen Rama have an original thought, no intuition. Its all observation, its all objective measurement but the explanation must explore the subjective mind more than the objective brain. I think he's afraid of what the atheist "scientists" would say.

The interviewer is kinda jerky..

Got nothing to do with consciousness. Consciousness not found in the brain.

Rama is surely tops but I feel that his prescriptions for a person to being a good scientist, are very controvertible. One can be passionate without being attached to senior "passionate" scientists! He began with "anomalies" (like phantom limbs). Why not take up issues like "past life memories of some children"? How do memories pass from dead to a new body, in such cases? I bet there are "God neurons" that stimulate brain to concoct a God (a Supreme Being, Almighty or whatever)!! Those devoid of that will be atheists!!

Waste of time, Conciousness can not be KNOWN as simple as it