With its billions of interconnected neurons, whose interactions change from millisecond to millisecond, the human brain is an archetypal complex system.
Interpretation
The human brain is a highly intricate and dynamic system made up of countless interconnected neurons that continuously interact.
Miguel Nicolelis highlights the human brain's complexity by describing it as a system of billions of neurons that are in constant communication with each other. This intricate network allows for rapid changes and adaptations, illustrating not only the sophistication of our cognitive processes but also the dynamic nature of neural interactions that underpin our thoughts, behaviors, and experiences.
In practice
During a science presentation about the brain's functions, this quote can illustrate its complexity.
Even two of humanity's most intimate possessions - a sense of self and a body image - are fluid, highly modifiable creations of the brain's mischievous deployment of electricity and a handful of chemicals. They both can change or be changed on less than a second's notice.
It's the first time an exoskeleton has been controlled by brain activity and offered feedback to the patients. Doing a demonstration in a stadium is something very much outside our routine in robotics. It's never been done before.
We want to galvanize people's imaginations. With enough political will and investment, we could make wheelchairs obsolete.
We cannot even predict what kinds of emergent properties would appear when animals begin interacting as part of a brain-net. In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves.
We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown.
Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.
Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe.
The game I play is a very interesting one. It's imagination, in a tight straightjacket.
It's quite literally true that we are star dust, in the highest exalted way one can use that phrase. ...I bask in the majesty of the cosmos. I use words, compose sentences that sound like the sentences I hear out of people that had revelation of Jesus, who go on their pilgrimages to Mecca.
The greatest explorer of recent decades is not even human.
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