When you think about the brain, it's difficult to
understand,
because if I were to ask you right now. how does the heart work, you would
If I were to ask about your lungs, you would say it exchanges oxn for carbon dioxide.
That's easy.
If I were to ask you how the brain works.
it's hard to understand because you can't just look
at a brain and understand what it is.
It's not a mechanical object, not a pump, not an
airbag.
It's just like, if you held it in your hand when it was dead, it's just a piece of fat.
To understand how the brain works, you have to go inside a living brain.
Because the brain's not mechanical, the brain is
electrical and it's chemical.
Your brain is made out of 100 billion cells, called neurons.
And these neurons communicate with each other with
electricity.
And we're going to eavesdrop in on a conversation between two cells.
and we're going to listen to something called a spike
But we're not going to record my brain or your brain or your teachers' brains.
we're going to use our good friend the cockroach.
Not just because I think they're cool. but because they have brains very similar to ours.
So if you learn a little bit about how their brains work.
we're going to learn a lot about how our brains work.