Brain in irregular patterns; other neurons are quiet most of the time, but occasionally emit a burst of action potentials. Axons transmit signals to other neurons by means of specialized junctions called synapses. A single axon may make as many as several thousand synaptic connections with other cells. When an action potential, traveling along an axon, arrives at a synapse, it causes a chemical called a neurotransmitter to be released. The neurotransmitter binds to receptor molecules in the membrane of the target cell. Synapses are the key functional elements of the brain. The essential function of the brain is cell-to-cell communication,
Consciousness and the Brain of patterns in sounds. Dehaene explores consciousness in human babies, non-human animals, and machines. Dehaene reviews evidence that young infants are indeed conscious, although their global workspaces may run 3-4 times slower than in adults, perhaps because their myelin is not well established. Monkeys can be trained to "report" on their conscious experiences via actions rather than speech, and monkeys show the same sorts of brain and behavioral patterns as humans in response to consciousness tests. Dehaene adds that some animals, like monkeys and dolphins, show evidence not just of consciousness but also of metacognition. He speculates that maybe what