Page 162 - The Miracle of Electricity in the Body

160 THE MIRACLE OF ELECTRICITY IN THE BODY

as the result of hundreds of thousands of axons, each with thou-
sands of terminals, establishing a connection with a quadrillion
(1,000,000,000,000,000) fibers. You never realize that the brain is de-
ciphering the signals. So how can it be structures of tissue that per-
ceive all this? This question encourages unbiased scientists to reflect
upon.
Gerald L. Schroeder, Professor of Nuclear Physics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology one of these scientists, ques-
tions the following about the sense of hearing:

And then comes the hard part of the hard question: the sound of music
... become[s] converted to bioelectrical pulses that are chemically
stored in the cortex of my brain. But how do I hear the sound?. . .But I
don’t hear biochemistry. I hear sound. Where is the sound generated
in my head? Or the vision; or the smell? Where is the consciousness?
Just which of those formerly inert atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitro-
gen, oxygen, and on and on, in my head have become so clever that
they can produce a thought or reconstitute an image. How those
stored biochemical data points are recalled and replayed into sen-
tience remains as enigmatic mystery. 85