• Question: Can we take out ideas from the brains of people like Leonardo da vinci and einstien?

    Asked by ibbikhawaja to Fiona, Jane, Joanna, Michelle, William on 15 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Michelle Murphy

      Michelle Murphy answered on 13 Jun 2010:

      Hey
      Cool idea, I like it! It’s kinda like in Harry Potter where Dumbledore extracted people’s memories. We can definitely learn from other people by their works and way of thinking and how they lived. The brain works by processing electrical and chemical signals so there is nothing solid we can take out a call an idea but people like Joanna can do really cool stuff taking images of people’s brains when they are thinking about different things and see where in the brain the thought is being formed. Maybe she can tell you more (thats me chickening out a bit).

    • Photo: Fiona Randall

      Fiona Randall answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hi, that is a nice question! We can learn a lot from people’s brains. I’m not sure whether the brains of Da Vinci or Einstein are still around. Both were very talented people and maybe their brains would have been interesting to look at to see if they were different. There actually has been some cool research done on art and the brain. There is some work that has looked at Parkinson’s disease patients who were artists before developing Parkinson’s. They looked at how their art changed by looking at paintings before and after they got ill and found that the treatment used to help them with the disease was changing their artistic ability-I find that fascinating.

    • Photo: Jane Henry

      Jane Henry answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      One thing we can do is learn from the way they did things – they worked on things that interested them and that they had a natural talent for, they were not afraid to challenge the ways things were done at the time and were prepared to work hard at their interests. A lot of creative people share these characteristics – passion, perception and persistence.

    • Photo: Joanna Brooks

      Joanna Brooks answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Well we can certaintly use their ideas to help us discover new things. If you mean physically remove the ideas from their brains then I don’t think that’s possible because an idea is essentially a thought – a thought is something that you can’t actually see or feel.

Comments

  • Photo: ibbikhawaja

    ibbikhawaja commented on :

    Thanks! I didnt really think you could take a puicture of a brain?…Do you use some kind of ultrasound?

  • Photo: Michelle

    Michelle commented on :

    Hey
    There are 2 main ways to take images of the brain (if you watch medical tv programs you will see both)
    Pet scans- the patient is given a small amount of a radioactive substance that is simular to glucose (the brains fuel) ares of the brain that are active will then attract this substance to them and the person lying on a bed is passed through a machine which scans for this substance.
    MRI – this uses large magnets to detect blood flow.
    Other scientists may know more about these.

  • Photo: ibbikhawaja

    ibbikhawaja commented on :

    Do certain types of chemical reactions show specific kinds of thoughts? For example if i like something will certain chemical reactions take place in my brain and if i don’t other kinds of chemical reactions will happen. And thanks for all the answers!