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Paul Grobstein's picture

What is the brain?

Welcome to the on-line forum associated with the Biology 202 at Bryn Mawr College. Its a way to keep conversations going between course meetings, and to do so in a way that makes our conversations available to other who may in turn have interesting thoughts to contribute to them. You're welcome to post here any thoughts that have arisen during the course this week (and to respond to thoughts others have posted).

One issue worth thinking about this week is that the notion of the brain as a stimulus/response device should probably be replaced with that of the brain as an input/output device, one which is capable of generating outputs on its own and in which inputs have somewhat unpredictable effects.  Another is the idea that the brain is a nested set of input/output boxes, and that it is the organization of these boxes that is responsible for behavior.   Are these good summaries of observations? stories? What observations do they not incorporate? What new questions do they raise?

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