What are some good videos on research on the brain?

Video? Wrong format for really learning anything that complicated and detailed that requires a lot of background knowledge to even make sense. However, if you already know a lot about psychology and biology, you might be able to understand some of the papers that have been written on the topic.

It’s possible that this can start you down the right path, but you better be prepared to do a lot of reading if you want to truly understand it. How much do you know about Dopamine receptors anyways?

Just because you’re interested in something, that doesn’t mean you can learn it, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean you can learn it quickly and/or without reading.

The brain is not like a computer. It is more like the world-wide-web. Additionally brains, other than the one in the skull, exist in organs throughout the body. The brain in the skull is actually a number of sub-brains, each involved with individual sensory modes, each connected directly and indirectly to the other sub-brains.

A number of sub-brains coordinate the flow of information. Lastly compiled information forms a mental universe in the frontal lobes where we think of ourselves and imagine that we just chose an action already initialed by a group of sub-brains.

A link between mental illnesses and creativity has only been anecdotally demonstrated. If it exists, my hunch is that, because such illnesses interfere with common activities, intensifies introspection and heightens emotions, creative behaviors are more likely.

@Bill1939 Anecdotally, I would say you are correct. For instance, high-functioning Autistic people tend to excel in some ways, but at the cost of having certain weaknesses; usually social skills are the first thing to get lost for the sake of whatever savant-like abilities are gained, and language centers suffer in exchange for great spatial skills.

There are many different theories on how the brain works. A very widely accepted theory is CRUM(Computational Representational Understanding of the Mind). In this theory, the brain is compared to a computer where neurons are like transistors or circuits. While I do not agree with this theory, it is very prevalent in cognitive science.

CRUM basically states that we think using data structures and logic within the mind. For instance, habits and certain social scripts are formed via if-then-else statements in the mind. It also comprises ideas that we classify and categorize certain concepts, memories, and experiences and operate on them like a computer would. An example would be adding color or size to an object in the mind using a mental representation that is analogous to data structures in coding that hold an object with characteristic fields.

There is much disagreement on this hypothesis, but CRUM has been the most theoretically and experimentally successful approach to mind ever developed.

I took a cognitive science course where we completely focused on comparison between the human brain and a computer. The book we used:http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Introduction-Cognitive-Science-Edition/dp/026270109X. This is a very good book and even covers different types of creativity and how creativity occurs in the individual mind as well as for collective groups of thinkers. While it does not cover a lot about schizophrenia, there are a lot of things you can learn from the book and then infer about the connection between schizophrenia and creativity. Youtube produces a few search results on the topic, but I don’t think it will give you the answer you are looking for. I hope this helps.

Take a look through YouTube for anything by Oliver Sacks, VS Ramachandran, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Antonio Damasio, Eric Kandel, and Michael Merzenich. You will come across differing opinions between these authors (I have read some particularly interesting disagreements between Dennett and Searle), but they should all have some information able to be understood by the layman.

When looking into the brain, I would advise a certain level of scepticism. I have a master’s degree in neuroscience, but yet nearly every lecturer I had said that they only had the allotted time to give a cursory introduction. There is so much content that the initial learning curve is very steep. But it is well worth it!!