Ode to the Brain – Symphony of Science

Me gustan mucho estos vídeos (por eso los comparto). En lo personal, mi fascinación por el cerebro humano comenzó siendo muy chiquito, cuando vi aquella escena de «Hombre mirando al Sudeste» en la que cortaban al medio y deshacían un cerebro con los dedos y tiraban los pedazos por la cañería de una pileta mientras corría el agua de la canilla. Ahí pensé «soy ese pedazo de goma gris» (que se deshace entre sus dedos como la goma de borrar entre los míos en la escuela) y la vida nunca fue igual para mí.

«Ode to the Brain» es el noveno episodio de los videos musicales de Symphony of Science. A través de las poderosas palabras de científicos como Carl Sagan, Robert Winston, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Jill Bolte Taylor, Bill Nye, y Oliver Sacks, cubre distintos aspectos del cerebro, incluyendo su evolución, red neuronal, pliego y mucho más. Las imágenes son tomadas de los videos del documental Cosmos, de Carl Sagan, de las charlas TED de Jill Bolte Taylor y Vilayanur Ramachandran, del episodio sobre el Cerebro de Bill Nye y su documental para la BBC «The Human Body», de la charla TED de Oliver Sachs, y del documental de Discovery Channel «Human Body: Pushing the Limits», entre otros.

Lyrics:

[Robert Winston]
It’s amazing to consider that I’m holding in my hands
The place where someone once felt, thought, and loved
For centuries, scientists have been battling to understand
What this unappealing object is all about

[Vilayanur Ramachandran]
Here is this mass of jelly
You can hold in the palm of your hands
And it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space

[Carl Sagan]
The brain has evolved from the inside out
Its structure reflects all the stages through which it has passed

[Jill Bolte Taylor]
Information in the form of energy
Streams in simultaneously
Through all of our sensory systems

And then it explodes into this enormous collage
Of what this present moment looks like
What it feels like
And what it sounds like

And then it explodes into this enormous collage
And in this moment we are perfect
We are whole and we are beautiful

[Robert Winston]
It appears rather gruesome
Wrinkled like a walnut, and with the consistency of mushroom

[Carl Sagan]
What we know is encoded in cells called neurons
And there are something like a hundred trillion neural connections
This intricate and marvelous network of neurons has been called
An enchanted loom

The neurons store sounds too, and snatches of music
Whole orchestras play inside our heads

20 million volumes worth of information
Is inside the heads of every one of us
The brain is a very big place
In a very small space

No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain
We can change ourselves
Think of the possibilities

[Bill Nye]
Think of your brain as a newspaper
Think of all the information it can store
But it doesn’t take up too much room
Because it’s folded

[Oliver Sacks]
We see with the eyes
But we see with the brain as well
And seeing with the brain
Is often called imagination

[Various]

[Robert Winston]
It is the most mysterious part of the human body
And yet it dominates the way we live our adult lives
It is the brain