full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Gero Miesenboeck: Re-engineering the brain

Unscramble the Blue Letters

But in contrast to my evil twin who lusts after world dtoioainmn, my mtvoeis are not sinister. I control the brain in order to understand how it wroks. Now wait a minute, you may say, how can you go straight to controlling the brain without understanding it first? Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? Many neuroscientists agree with this view and think that understanding will come from more detailed observation and analysis. They say, "If we could record the activity of our neurons, we would understand the brain." But think for a moment what that means. Even if we could mrseuae what every cell is doing at all times, we would still have to make sense of the reecdrod activity patterns, and that's so difficult, chances are we'll uendnstard these patterns just as little as the brains that produce them.

Open Cloze

But in contrast to my evil twin who lusts after world __________, my _______ are not sinister. I control the brain in order to understand how it _____. Now wait a minute, you may say, how can you go straight to controlling the brain without understanding it first? Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? Many neuroscientists agree with this view and think that understanding will come from more detailed observation and analysis. They say, "If we could record the activity of our neurons, we would understand the brain." But think for a moment what that means. Even if we could _______ what every cell is doing at all times, we would still have to make sense of the ________ activity patterns, and that's so difficult, chances are we'll __________ these patterns just as little as the brains that produce them.

Solution

  1. domination
  2. motives
  3. understand
  4. works
  5. recorded
  6. measure

Original Text

But in contrast to my evil twin who lusts after world domination, my motives are not sinister. I control the brain in order to understand how it works. Now wait a minute, you may say, how can you go straight to controlling the brain without understanding it first? Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? Many neuroscientists agree with this view and think that understanding will come from more detailed observation and analysis. They say, "If we could record the activity of our neurons, we would understand the brain." But think for a moment what that means. Even if we could measure what every cell is doing at all times, we would still have to make sense of the recorded activity patterns, and that's so difficult, chances are we'll understand these patterns just as little as the brains that produce them.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
nervous system 4
electrical current 3
nerve cell 2
electrical impulses 2
headless bodies 2
actor implements 2
brain structure 2
electronic toy 2
mushroom body 2
blue leds 2
odor detector 2

Important Words

  1. activity
  2. agree
  3. analysis
  4. brain
  5. brains
  6. cart
  7. cell
  8. chances
  9. contrast
  10. control
  11. controlling
  12. detailed
  13. difficult
  14. domination
  15. evil
  16. horse
  17. lusts
  18. means
  19. measure
  20. minute
  21. moment
  22. motives
  23. neurons
  24. neuroscientists
  25. observation
  26. order
  27. patterns
  28. produce
  29. putting
  30. record
  31. recorded
  32. sense
  33. sinister
  34. straight
  35. times
  36. twin
  37. understand
  38. understanding
  39. view
  40. wait
  41. works
  42. world