Big Brain Research
So I watched a series of brain and neuron videos from this great YouTube channel called CrashCourse. Here’s some of my key takeaways:
The brain is part of the central nervous system
The brain is the source of self and controls human behavior
Parts of the brain have specific functions yet nearly every region of the brain lights up during simple tasks
“Old brain” = medulla + brain stem + pons + thalamus + reticular formation + cerebellum
Basic bodily functions
Limbic system = amygdala + hypothalamus + hippocampus
Memory consolidation, fear, aggression, learning
Gray matter = two hemispheres that make up 85% of brain weight
Oversee thinking, speaking, perceiving
Corpus callosum connects the two hemispheres
Left = language, right = creative function, controls the opposite side of the body
Cerebral cortex = 20 billion neurons and glial cells for protection
Neurons are not only in the brain, they run the whole length of your body!
They respond to stimuli and transmit signals
They are the longest lived cells in your body, brain neurons will live as long as you do!
Neurons are irreplaceable ( … or are they?! In my interview with Erin she said there’s research proving otherwise…)
They have large appetites, 25% of the calories humans consume go to brain activity
Three types of neurons:
Sensory neurons = transmit impulses from sensory receptors to the CNS
Motor neurons = impulse moves from CNS to rest of body
Interneurons = impulse moves between sensory and motor neurons, these are the most abundant
Neurons transmit at one uniform strength and speed but can vary in frequency
The brain reads the neuron signals like binary code, organized by location, sensation, magnitude, and importance
Neuron action potential = depolarize resting neuron to cause a big enough change in membrane potential to trigger voltage-gated channels to open
Resting membrane potential = -70mV
Trigger threshold = -55mV, all-or-none triggering
A weak stimulus tends to trigger less frequent action potentials, intense signals have increased frequency to tell muscles to contract harder
Conduction velocity is faster for reflexes and slower for glands and guts
Transmission speed is affected by whether or not there’s a myelin sheath on the neuron axon
Remaining brain questions:
What purpose do the folds in the brain have?
What does anxiety, depression, poor mental health do to how the brain functions?
Moodboard - interesting connections and weird thoughts
big brain, smooth brain, brain fart, mind blown, brain spiral, black box, two hemispheres
Sketch
For this project I would love to build a custom PCB sculpture. Components would only be on one side of the circuit board and I’d like to build some prototypes on the Bantam Desktop mill in the ITP shop.
LEDs
I want to illuminate a series of LEDs. They need to be addressable so that I can control each pixel individually to make neuron-firing animations. I only need the LEDs to illuminate a white light. Here are a couple of options I was considering:
LED filament or flexible LED strip or addressable LED strip or nOOds (flexible filament) or micro LEDs or regular old SMT LEDs
I ended up going for the NeoPixel mini because of its small footprint. Also, Adafruit has provided the EAGLE component that I can use for my design and I can leverage the NeoPixel library. This will cut down my work considerably! These are also a relatively affordable option as far as I can tell from my searching. I might need up to 50 pixels (or more?!) in my final sculpture, so I’ll be going through a lot of NeoPixels...
Resources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRFXSjkpKWA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHrmiy4W9C0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPix_X-9t7E
⚡️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZG8M_ldA1M ⚡️
Neuron Forest by Katie Caron