Wonders of brain

Few years back I chanced upon a computer generated image of three-dimensional synaptic map of brain. The subtext commented that the image looked uncannily similar to the universe that we know of with galaxies, super galaxies, nebula spread across light years.  While the image looked impressive the comparison did not. With visible matter [that forms galaxies, super galaxies and so on] only constituting 1% of the total mass in Universe, we hardly have a clear picture of Universe. That said, one cannot miss one ironic commonality that brain and the universe both fall in the lowest-precision-human-knowledge category.  It is hardly surprising that lion's share of present popular science literature are on either cosmology or neuroscience.
I, being an expert in neither of these fields, find it lot easier to talk about the mysteries with an excitement of a wide-eyed boy who feels no burden to theorize or explain with rigour, the 'why' and 'how' part of intricately complex pieces of creation.
So it amazes me that human brain in average has about 100 billion (10¹¹) neurons and 100 trillion(10¹⁴) synapses. It also is exciting to know that from the perspective of evolution, neocortex is the latest addition in the brain structure and only mammals have that. Neocortex is the most complex part of brain and is made up of  6 layers that actually is responsible for processing all sensory information, breaking down into canonical patterns that form the 'actionable memory'. In human, 90% of cortex is essentially neocortex. Science also educated us that there is a 'slow path' and corresponding 'fast path' for decision making in brain. Slow path goes through cortex and typically is more precise compared to fast path. We also know now that amygdala plays central role in all our emotions and it is tightly connected to cortex. With so massive and intricate structures in place, initial few years of our development are mostly spent in developing the networks between the neurons. Now what happens if for some reason connections are not established properly, what happens if some structural error happens during the connection development?
Well, possibilities are immense, but our knowledge is very limited. While most are in the realm of speculation, there are few exceptions, like Autism which scientists believe is a clear case where unusual change happens during initial wiring of neurons.
Thanks to the beautifully made movies like, 'Tare Zameen par' and 'Rainman' many are aware of the problem of Autism. For others, Autism is a neurological development disorder that sets off before the age of 3 years. It is characterized by impaired social and/or communication skill, sometimes inability to differentiate left/right or order, repetitive body movement and/or unusual attachment to objects and routines. They typically have problems associated with numbers and language.

While there are no clear winning theories on how and how this disorder happens, a general understanding is it is an effect of lower connectivity in different regions of cortex. Lately fMRI and PET scanning based studies are undertaken but results are far from conclusive. "Oculomotor studies have provided evidence of neocortical dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex and connections to the parietal lobe... Perception is accomplished in the brain by means of a parietal pathway for spatial and motor function and a temporal pathway for identification of objects, faces, and gestures. Anomalies in the amygdala and other structures of the medial temporal lobe have been demonstrated repeatedly in autism spectrum disorders, suggesting involvement of the temporal pathway for visuoperceptual processing."
An interesting observation is that the male-to-female ratio of patients with autistic disorder is approximately 3-4:1 i.e. autism is manifested more in male children. This observation leads to a hypothesis that certain genetic pattern, particularly X chromosome play a role in the development of autistic syndrome, however there is no defining proof for that.
Dr. Baron-Cohen, a leading expert in autism related disorders has a theory. "In the general population, you find that, on average, males have a stronger drive to systemize and females have a stronger drive to empathize. Those are the 2 cognitive processes we've been focusing on to try to understand autism and why it should be more common among boys than girls. We've found that people on the autistic spectrum show an exaggeration of the male profile."
He adds, "when we started working in this area, we set up a model as if these 2 things were independent of each other. But as we've tested more individuals, we've found there's some kind of trade-off, so that people who are good at one tend to be worse at the other. Systemizing is the drive to analyze or construct a system. The key thing is that when you systemize, you identify the rules or the laws that govern that system in order to predict how it will behave." He argues that this is more a male trait and in many cases the parents' brains actually show enhanced systemizing skill.
While there are common patterns demonstrated by autistic child, there are cases where an autistic person develops exceptional number and memory skill. Most well-known is the case of Daniel Tammet. Daniel is born on 31st Jan, 1979 in Britain and is diagnosed as autistic child. While he has autistic traits in terms of his social skill and his obsession with routine, he already has many exceptional feats under his belt.
He calculates faster than a calculator. He speaks many languages. To be precise he speaks almost all European languages including the most difficult Icelandic too. It is said that Icelandic is one of the difficult languages to learn and he amazed the observers by mastering the language in 7 days flat.
In 2004 he set a new record by recalling the value of pi till 22,514 decimal places. He took 5 hours to do that. He says that he does not see numbers, he actually sees them as shapes, colors, textures. He wrote couple of books and the first one, Born on a Blue day,  which is his autobiography, has become a bestseller in UK. The Guardian wrote an excellent article on him in case you want to find more. The same article talks about another autistic person who played a complex classical piece on piano after hearing it for the first time though he did not have much piano experience earlier.
The cases of Daniel and many other autistic savants, show us how amazing this fatty stuff inside our skull is. A disability in turn bring out another exceptional mental faculty. Some say that these faculties are available in normal brain too but inaccessible to conscious part of the brain. It is evident that evolution has already gifted lot more to us than we are aware of. It is no wonder that we only use 10% of our brain capacity since most of our so called 'mental exercise' is nothing but reactive and repetitive thought process.