After providing all the funding for The Brain from Top to Bottom for over 10 years, the CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction informed us that because of budget cuts, they were going to be forced to stop sponsoring us as of March 31st, 2013.

We have approached a number of organizations, all of which have recognized the value of our work. But we have not managed to find the funding we need. We must therefore ask our readers for donations so that we can continue updating and adding new content to The Brain from Top to Bottom web site and blog.

Please, rest assured that we are doing our utmost to continue our mission of providing the general public with the best possible information about the brain and neuroscience in the original spirit of the Internet: the desire to share information free of charge and with no adverstising.

Whether your support is moral, financial, or both, thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

Bruno Dubuc, Patrick Robert, Denis Paquet, and Al Daigen





Monday, 25 April 2022
Our brain: neither hardware nor software, but “liveware”!

This week I’d like to tell you about a book by David Eagleman, entitled Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain. This book discusses several subjects related to brain plasticity, which is one of Eagleman’s research areas. In this book, one of Eagleman’s main ideas, which he attempts to conceptualize with the term “livewired”, is that the human brain is a machine that spends its time reconfiguring itself. In contrast, computers are “hardwired” with predefined electronic circuits that run software—computer programs that use this computer hardware to perform mathematical calculations and logic operations. The human mind or human thought has often been erroneously compared to a software program that needs the “hardware” of the human brain to manifest itself. This is a very poor metaphor for many reasons, of which the one cited by Eagleman is not the least. (more…)

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