Author: by Alexander IVAMTSKV. Dr. Sc. (Med.). Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology, RAS page 37 Articles in this rubric reflect the opinion of the author.- Ed. The three central problems before the 20th-century science, experts tell us, were the structure of matter, heredity and human consciousness. The first was resolved at the start of the century by means of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. The second, in 1953, when the American scientist Dr. John \tson and his British counterpart Francis Crick broke the genetic code (which won them a Nobel Prize in 1962). The mystery of human consciousness, however, formulated as a scientific problem by the Russian Nobel laureate, Academician Ivan Pavlov, still remains unresolved, though considerable progress has been made towards its solution(*). This has largely become possible with the advent of imagery technologies showing the human brain at work. Another major achievement was the breaking of the rhythmical transmission code of nerve signals (most of the credit here goes to Russian scientists) and the description of the physicotechnical nature of nervous excitation. As a result considerable progress has been made in the diagnostics and therapy of a whole range of nervous and psychic disorders. Today specialists can use brain performance parameters to keep check on the work of operators in charge of complex systems in order to rule out possible human errors. On the threshold of the new century one feels like bringing to the reader's attention some of the lessons verified by the latest brain research, what can be of practical benefit to every individual and our society as a whole since our code of behaviour should conform to the functional laws of the human brain. And there are three such basic lessons. First: leam to think, because the brain is just an organ of thoughts and senses. The brain of a newbom infant is a tabula rasa, or clean sheet, it is like a computer void of any p ... Читать далее