A Conversation

BY NILE PITKOW

I had a talk with my dad about the brain. He is a neuroscientist, which means he thinks about thinking. I asked him a bunch of questions. I hope you enjoy and learn from our conversation.

Nile: What is your brain?

Xaq: Your brain is a blob of jelly in your skull that you think with. It’s made of lots of tiny parts called neurons, which are nerve cells. They’re shaped kind of like trees, and they touch each other, and each neuron sends electricity down its branches to turn on and off other neurons. That electricity is your thoughts.

N: What is your brain supposed to do?

X: Your brain turns your senses into actions! It turns what you see into what you do.

N: What would happen if you had brain surgery, but your brain fell out of your head?

X: How far did it fall out?

N: Your brain is on the floor, and your body is still on the table.

X: Your eyes are still in your head?

N: Yes and pollute the water. Polluted water is bad for people and biodiversity. For example, if a river gets polluted, then its fish get poisoned because of the pollution. The animals or people eat that fish. Of course, the poisoned fish then poison the animal that eats the fish to survive.

Plastic

Another important issue is plastic trash that ends up in the ocean. Animals mistake plastic for food. They eat the plastic, get poisoned, ill, or even die from it.

In fact, the National Park Service, a government agency, reported that “Americans throw 500 million plastic straws each year into the ocean.” Scientists think that if this keeps on going, the ocean will have more plastic trash than living things, such as fish because eight tons of plastic get thrown into the ocean each year.

HUMANS

Humans contribute to climate change, too. When we feed wild animals, it causes them to lose fear of humans and venture into town and can destroy cities if too comfortable around humans. “Litter from food and drinks can increase the likelihood of animal encroachment and even attacks. Animals are in constant search of food, and when we litter our food waste, the animals become intrigued and venture further and further from their natural habitats,” warns Consolidated Resources Incorporated, a small Arizona recycling company.

MELTING

Ice Caps

Because of global warming, the ice caps are melting. Melting ice caps is a huge problem

with my Dad, The

X: In that case, you would eventually die but you wouldn’t die right away. You’d probably be alive for a second.

N: Would it hurt?

X: You don’t have any pain sensors IN your brain, but you just disconnected all of your senses, so maybe your senses would go crazy and hurt a lot, and see flashes or maybe black. This never happened to me so I can’t tell you for sure. But people who lose an arm or leg sometimes feel pain as if it were in the missing part. They call that phantom limb pain.

N: What would happen if you only had half of a brain in your head?

X: Which half?

N: Any one.

X: If it’s the left half, I actually know someone who had that happen. This person had severe epilepsy, which means that their neurons would fire like crazy instead of in thoughtful patterns. Doctors couldn’t fix (the epilepsy) with medicine, so they removed half of their brain when they were a baby. And now they’re pretty normal. Their right side of their body is a little weak and a little clumsy, but they can still talk and think and love and laugh. The brain is really flexible. They call that

Forest Loss

because animals that live in the Arctic, such as polar bears, lose places to live and have no territory. The animals have no place to go or hunt. Animals may die when they lose their habitats.

Melting ice caps cause the sea levels to rise, too. The sea level affects islands, ecosystems, and forests near the coast and causes flooding. Rainfall patterns change. Places that have less precipitation, which is rain, may experience rainfall more often. Animals that are used to less rainfall may not be able to cope with the rain. Plants may die due to the sudden change in rainfall patterns. Adapting to rainfall patterns may even be hard for those animals that are used to sudden changes.

GREENHOUSES

Greenhouse gases also contribute to climate change. Greenhouse gases trap heat from the Earth similar to greenhouses trapping heat for plants, but these greenhouse gases are very dangerous to the Earth’s survival as they rapidly cause global warming.