Like most typical girls, I grew up watching Disney movies, which consisted primarily of princesses finding their true loves and living happily ever after. I watched these movies and played “house” while thinking to myself that one day I would find my own prince charming, and live happily ever after just like the princesses I grew up admiring. In addition to the Disney movies that initiated my thoughts of finding true love, learning about the concept of “soul mates” added to my belief that I was destined to be with someone. Plato presents a theory of soul mates in his philosophical dialogue, Symposium. He describes humans as originally having four arms and

“Written on the [brain] is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille.” (1)

In this paper, I would like to explore the origin of the writing on the human brain from a neurobiological perspective.  Neurobiology can provide us with information about the material nature of the brain.  After developing an understanding of the brain, I would like to consider the implications for learning and teaching. 

Jonah Lehrer, in Proust was a Neuroscientist, suggests that Marcel Proust, in his
writing, predicted the, “instability and inaccuracy of [long-term] memory…” [1]. Before
the dawn of the 21st century, neuroscience suggested that memory, valuable pieces of
information, were archived in a structure in the brain, such as the lateral and basal nuclei
of the amygdala.  In 2000, research on rats with fear conditioning and a protein inhibitor
showed that the act of remembrance (reactivation) in fact changed the molecular
underpinnings of the memory by making the memory ‘labile’ once again [2].  Therefore,
new protein synthesis at the synapse was needed to ‘reconsolidate’ the information to

                                                            The Perception of Pain

            I have never met anyone who has not experienced pain, either physical or emotional.  However, while pain is indeed universal, it is also highly individualized.  While this individualized perception of physical pain makes some sense, it is harder to grasp the relationship between the emotional pain that a person experiences and the physical symptoms that the body produces in response to that emotional pain. This relationship is further complicated by the fact that these physical responses to emotional pain are highly individualized.  Looking at the perception and interpretation of pain, both physical and emotional, helps to understand the degree to which each nervous system is unique as well as the interconnectedness between the body and the mind.