The Enchanted loom. Processing sensory information

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Description

The brain-the "Enchanted Loom," as Sir Charles Sherrington, one of the founders of modern brain research, called it-is the most intricate, almost unfathomably complex product of evolution. It is a tapestry woven of a hundred billion threads-the fibers of all its nerve cells. Computers have large memories and prodigious abilities to calculate, but are slow at interpreting visual images that the human brain recognizes at a glance. This program looks at the range of sensory information that is transmitted to the human cerebral cortex, and examines how the brain sorts and classifies sensory information, searching for clues and interpreting them on the basis of expectation, past experience, and information from other sources. The senses provide the information, and the brain provides the meaning.