Advances in brain imaging are allowing researchers to more fully understand the organisation, composition and functioning of the human brain, whose extraordinary abilities never cease to amaze us!
Working non-stop, the brain is simply made to learn and continually garners new knowledge and skills. Without us even realising, it processes thousands of pieces of information and continually informs us about the world around us. It manages all of our reasoning, our judgements and our decisions, which are not always taken rationally. Organised for life in society, it makes us social beings.
Divided into three parts, this exhibition, whose scientific commissioner is Stanislas Dehaene, Professor at the Collège de France and Director of the INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, reports on the latest findings concerning the brain and focuses on learning processes. It also offers numerous tests to experiment with and addresses the neuronal basis of social behaviour.
1. What's inside our heads?
Although our brains all have the same basic shape and organisation, viewed up close no two are the same. But despite all of our differences, we all pretty much activate the same brain regions to perceive, feel, move, talk, act and reason, etc.
What makes up the brain? What are the stages in its development? What are its basic components? Which cells does it contain? What relations do they maintain? How do they communicate?
In this first part, learn all about this organ which remains mysterious and dive into the microscopic world so as to discover the structure of the neuron, get to know glial cells and understand how information flows through the brain.
2. The non-stop brain
Our brain never rests ... even when we're doing absolutely nothing! We can count on it at all times. It changes throughout our lives and its skills evolve.
In this second part of the exhibition, discover a four-part insight into the wonderful capabilities of the brain: Made for learning, See with your brain, Decide to act and In all consciousness. And test yourself with games based on laboratory experiments.
As you conduct experiments on yourself, you will learn about memory; the plasticity of the brain which allows it to adapt to changing situations; brain mechanisms which come into play when reading; sight and how the brain interprets information; the role of emotions in decision-making; fluctuations in concentration; the ability to multi-task; non-conscious mental processes.
Here is an overview of some of the contents of the exhibition
3. The social brain
From birth, our brain is pre-organised for living in society and learns to think about others. Recognising faces, interpreting other people's intentions, cooperating ... throughout life, our interpersonal skills evolve. They are based on the activation of specific neuronal circuits in certain brain areas, and even some molecules such as oxytocin which processes social information and acts on the desire to reach out to our fellow humans
Learn about all these fascinating aspects during a somewhat peculiar filmed lecture…