TOW #24 Secrets of the Brain by: Carl Zimmer

Reading goals:

• find an interesting article from a different source

Writing goals:

• seamless transition
• fully analyze each device & connect back to thesis

The brain, as recently educated journalist Carl Zimmer describes it, is an extremely complex organ. Scientists agree, but, to a certain extent they understand even more so how little we know about the human brain. In a sense, most scientists would say that Zimmer was understating the brain’s intricacies. We have only studied the brain intensively for only a few short decades, and we have just started to grasp it’s capabilities and inner workings. Carl Zimmer, journalist from the National Geographic, aims to put these new found discoveries in the spotlight in his article “Secrets of the Brain,” by utilizing both imagery and numerical data.

In the beginning of his article, Zimmer describes laying in the machine to receive an MRI. He speaks of his thought process while laying in the machine, and mentions many parts of the brain, referring to how his “emotions were the creation of the three-pound loaf of flesh” in his head. He also mentions that all of the memories he is able to draw on were “coordinated by seahorse-shaped folds in the brain called the hippocampus,” and that the “web of links” that was his brain were firing. This imagery that Zimmer utilizes allows him to convey the brain as more of an operating system, or something that is alive. People commonly do not think about their brain and it’s functions so this is the perfect introduction to what the brain is like in simple terms before Zimmer talks about science-type things. Imagery helps the reader to begin thinking about the brains functions, and later on numerical data solidifies the new ideas that Zimmer presents.

Like any good scientific article, Zimmer presents the reader with numerical data in order to solidify concepts and theories for the reader. In order to convey just how much work barely dents the complexities of the brain, Zimmer describes researcher's brain mapping: “[they have been] charting the activity of 20,000 protein-coding genes at 700 sites within each brain.” Zimmer also is able to convey the magnitude of the brain. He states that even just for a mouse brain, it will take “another two years to complete a scan of all 70 million neurons in a mouse.” This concrete data appeals to logos in the reader. Who can argue the cold hard facts? Especially because it is a scientific article to an audience that is interested in science, these numbers will aid comprehension and make the information more believable.

Zimmer is able to shine a spotlight on new scientific discoveries about the brain while utilizing imagery in order to ease the reader into the topic, and then numerical data in order to solidify the validity of the research the article discusses. Thus, Zimmer is able to open up the eyes of the reader to a blossoming world in science.

(Robert Clark)

** Note: totally did not realize that my previous article was about neuroscience as well. I guess I'm unconsciously very interested in brains!**