Damn good question. This book kinda glances over all that. This is all based on a theory he (Calvin) proposed in The Cerebral Code. It's based on Hebbs work in the 50's about mutual excitation it seems. I've never come across Hebbs before. So I spent the morning looking around to see what I could find. Funny thing about this is that right before this that gestalt psychology was one of the methods of thought to which Hebb's idea was an alternative. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I've found several sites talking about Hebbian Learning. A lot of them are in regards to artifical intelligence. From what I've gathered, it's the setup for the 'groove' in the record player. It's a resonance that will effect the outcome in the Darwinian Competition in Calvin's theory. The quotes above came from here. Also found a group of links in an online encyclopedia. Found a link on wikipedia, as well. One last link. That last one's good I think. Lots of references at the bottom if one could find them. As to PET scans...? Haven't seen anything. I think it's mostly from cultured brain cells or something. It's basically a prediction based on physiology. I wonder if our technology would even be up to the job of scanning such small areas? To detect the patterns played out in a .5 mm area (actually, what would the area be? Hexagon 0.5 mm to the side. Bah, too long since geometry. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!). It's definitely interesting though, isn't it? And, yeah, the hexagons and the vast majority of this is Calvin's theory. He puts it forward in the Cerebral Code. Turns out that Calvin has all his books online. Kinda makes me wonder... a bit. But, this is the philosophy section. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I'd love input on whether on any of this is anywhere near 'mainstream'. Basically, from what I've gathered it's about this trait of the surface layer pyramidials. This 0.5 mm gap between connections. The 'express train'. This is what sets up the hexagons. Because, I erred earlier when inferring that only one minicolumn in a hex could fire in a pattern at one time. Because the diameter (length, whatever it'd be in a hexagon) is greater than 0.5. As was shown in the diagram above. So I'm actually a bit confused by the way it made the smallest area without redundancy be the limit of it's size. Redundancy seems to imply only one minicolumn firing at a time. So, I'm a bit confused there. I need to read the Cerebral Code to learn more about the theoretical roots that are glanced over in Lingua. Anyway, I failed to take into account a triangular linkage. I mentioned it in a quote, but didn't elaborate. (Mainly because the book didn't elaborate much. The following is just my conjecture of what it means.) Because of the 0.5 mm gap, these triangular connections occur. (Why three? Good question. I'll get back once I've taken in the Cerebral Code.) And because of the triangles, the hexagons forming out of them. Meh. I'm not entirely sure. There is another implied reason for the hexagonal shape. Merely the simplicity of nature. Packing in shapes into a space hungry system... What's the best shape? What seems to be the shape chosen most often throughout various evolutionary cycles. Hell. Check this out. How's this for simplicity? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I think the hexagonal nature is not... completely necessary for the theory (Calvin's). It just sets up simple rules for competition. As you'll see in part two. Or you could read it yourself in full of course, in either book. It's not that the neurons with connected dendrites map the pattern, not between themselves anyway. The multicolumns act as a single unit in some sort of way. In an are of cortex (according to calvin) 0.5 mm hex, there are approx. 30,000 neurons. Or about 300 multicolumns composed of 100 neurons or so each. I imagine there would be a lot of variability. And the networks are constantly changing, as you say. The competitions rise and fall like flickering ghosts. Prairie fires. It doesn't make it completely clear in Lingua as to how the hex's change, but it does say that any one multicolumn can be in more than one hexagon. That is the hexagon is ephemeral. Likely some would be bigger, some smaller. Shifting about grouping different groups of neurons at any given time. It would probably make a good screensaver. And as to the resonance, this phenomena has been seen (kinda) in epilepsy victims. Patterns become 'burned' in. And it is this 'burning in' that is the key idea behind the washboarded ruts, the groove in the record (I think). In non-epileptic assemblies, the patterns would be far less likely to be burned in and activated. There would be a variation amongst the patterns, by which had taken place more, more recently, etc... All the things that we consider learning. The more it's in memory the more likely it is to come up. Gettin me? Not entirely sure what you're saying here. Could this be the multicolumn I was talking about? I... think that this is the basis of Hebbian Learning. The more that two or more brain cells stimulate and 'bond' with one another, the stronger(?) that connection becomes. The groove is laid down. Amonst countless others. (Well, probably not countless. Has to be some kind of limit.) The more any particular pattern (which specifies specific connections between specific multicolumns/cells) is used, the more likely that connection would be to activate. When I get into competition (which will be soon. Discussing this with you is really starting to solidify the concepts. Pity that I didn't read Cerebral Cortex first, seeing as how it's more mechanical in nature) I will demonstrate how this 'probability'(?) of the pattern, the 'resonance', will cause one variant of a particular pattern 'war' to be more likely to thrive in any patch of cortical tissue and would also confine specific concepts and patterns to specific areas of the brain and specific conduits of travel. The flow is burned in. I'm not entirely sure. Again. Mechanics is sparse in this volume. Hebb's theory is about short vs. long memory. The thing about long term memory (the physiological basis behind Hebb's ideas) is that they must be physical in order to survive comas and seizures (for the most part). They must not rely upon the pattern floating about in RAM. Keeping itself alive. I think that you may be stuck in the 'one stick' frame of mind that I was with your ooze analogy judging from the way I think you're using baseline. There is a multitude of patterns burned into a 'field' of cortex. Depending on the area of course. The angular gyrus would be one of the most plentiful in patterns I would think. The temporal (where the words are) would have the appropriate number of patterns to function as it does. Which inputs or associations to serve as possibilities for competition in any given area. Whew. Talk about recursive. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! That's a lot of parentheses. Don't worry, I'm a parentheses kind of guy myself, but I try to stay away from double nests (at least double nests with the second (nest) as large as yours. ;-) ) As to commentary, what you say could certainly be similar. The problem with transferring these patterns is when they get shuffled onto the nerve highways. The arcuate and temporal fasciculum which connect the language axis like a road running from the the southern tip of the Straits of Magellan to the northern tip. The long way through the middle east. These nerve bundles are not 'coherent' like the fibers in fiber optic scope. The fibers are jumbled and they begin and end in different locations. They fan out over several mm whenever they do begin and/or end. The competition which I'm going to discuss expresses how evolution of thought takes place in a single area. Esperanto's Apple, which I'm leading up to, deals with obtaining a standard throughout the brain so that thoughts don't become more and more incoherent as they're passed to and from different areas. Remember, a lot of times two (or more) areas of the brain will swap information back and forth over and over again. Feedback loops. Sometimes to diminish sometimes to enhance. Sometimes for other reasons (I'd presume). If the pattern kept getting jumbled at each handoff, things would get messy pretty quick. I'm gonna get a head of myself on just this one concept. Take concept A. It can be any old concept (piece of concept. Whatever) you want it to be. Now, let's say is a concept in the temporal lobe. It gets sent to the angular gyrus for sensory association. When it get's to the angular gyrus, it's now become f(A). Well, maybe the angular gyrus just accepts g(A) as A and that's just the way it is. Well, when it gets sent back to the temporal lobe (for whatever reason) then it has now become g[f(A)]. Well, maybe the temporal has this as a duplicate pattern for A. Well, it just gets worse as more areas of the brain are added and possibly infinite in recursion (which is never a really good idea for a system). So without the universal A, brain functions become more inefficient and costly. Slower, too. By the way, "the dendrite attachment fires to the larger network", I'm sure that's a slip of the tongue, right? Dendrites receive input. Axons are output. This adds to the mixing that occurs in the swapping. Because A different path must be taken one way than the other. Axons are one way. If they were two-way, the jumble would merely unjumble at the other end. And the means of choosing what is relevant is Darwinian Competition. Bear with me. I'll get there. You'll need to further define exactly what you're talking about with baseline. I have mixed notions. It seems at one time to refer to the multicolumns, while at another it appears to refer to the 'burned in' patterns. The reason I think multicolumn is because of your use of dendrites. If you will look at this diagram, it shows the basic idea of the multicolumn. The multicolumn vs. the neuron are at different scales, and the neuron is only showing the paired connections at 0.5mm distance. There would be far more than that in that area. I am not completely familiar with this multicolumn idea. I had interpreted them to focus on all the neurons in a multigroup to act in 'harmony' of sorts. A common purpose. Looking at that diagram now makes me wonder a bit. There are shown more neurons than those in the surface layer. So, all these neurons couldn't be of the type we're talking about here with the 0.5 mm gap. Interesting. That's something else I'm going to have to dig up. I'm sure Calvin's other book will discuss it more detail. So, anyway, I'm almost conceiving of it as hexagons within hexagons. Network within network. I imagine a good deal of multimodality would come in at the multicolumn level as well. I'll look into it. And, interesting that you should mention this muscle memory. This is something that I hadn't been taking into account, even though it's something that I've been going on about quite a bit. I'm not sure how that would relate. It's not so much muscle memory as internalized memory. Habit. I think that this type of automatic behavior might actually move areas of the brain altogether. And, I imagine that even that would be theory. Right? The brains so wonderfully complicated. And, you know what really excites me about this. Not necessarily Calvin's little theory (although it is nice), but the idea of evolution taking place in the brain. This concept has all sorts of possible builds. It is an idea that fits in so well with how we ourselves appear to have emerged, that it must be something like the right idea. And, glial cells also come to mind. The newfound importance (possibly) of these cells could redefine the brain. Glial cells have their own seperate network. Both a large scale network regulated by Calcium (affects large areas, crosses gaps) but also a smaller one-to-one connection with other glials. Many of these glial cells control the synapse of regular neurons. They can dampen it, enhance it, stop it, provide a path for connection, kill the connection altogether. In this light, the competition of our concepts may not be 'wild' after all. They might be sheparded. Just as mankind is a 'domesticated' creature. So might our brains be.' Interesting stuff. Darwinian Competition again. Think rising and falling populations of competing animals and you'll be getting there. There are many conditions that could apply to which competing 'animal' survives. In fact, it's not a 'there can be only one' type situation. The concept (pattern (pattern of patterns?)) need merely to reach a sufficient size. A loud enough voice in the choir to be accepted and shuffled on to the next stage of processing. Remember that the brains ultimate function is to move it along. ;-) Egads!! Another long-ass post. I told you it was complicated, didn't I? I think it's shaping up though. What about you?
Formation of an initial baseline: You are an infant. You get a lot of raw stimulous. That stimulous is stashed away in the brain, establishing a context (for instance, hunger or pleasure), likely impacted one's emotional reaction (which is very very RAW in an infant) to said stimulous. Auditory input includes words being uttered by people. As single words like "mama" are repeated, along with gestures indicating what to associate with the idea, that stimulous ends up finding the same impressions that it left the previous times that similar stimulous was experienced. The word gets associated with a body of experiences. As the stimulous indicating "mama" is repeated, a baseline is formed around that particular stimulous "mama". It forms dendrytic connections with a group of nuerons (could be two, (in which case it will increase to more nuerons if stimulous is re-enforcing) or a thousand (there is probably some regulatory system for this (pardon the excessive recursiveness, this is addition in afterthoughts)) that were initially involved with the stimulous in question... being strengthened each time it re-occurs. This forms a "baseline" in that when the stimulous 'mama' is incurred in real time, the set of nuerons associated with the baseline fire, enabling links to all associated experiences. As new input comes, this initial idea "mama" is also separated from the stimulous "dada", as "dada" is a different stimulous and thus forms its own 'baseline' in the exact same manner. However, "mama" and "dada" are related concepts, so the baseline is linked basically as "the ones who resolve my discomfort" or however it is experienced in the individual mind (and highly effected by the emotional impact of the stimulous recieved from the entities you associate with the words, e.g. part of your experience). So it forms a link between words or 'baselines' in the context of yet more stimulous. And so on, and so forth. Something like that.
Hmmm. Ok, I think I'm getting you. The thing about this baseline is that it is a series of processes. For instance, mama. First, the sensory analysis of the phonemes takes place. /m /a /m /a or something. (Rosa would be a help here if she hadn't turned. Maybe she'll lend an hand anyway.) These phoneme components are analyzed in different areas of the brain. For instance, I posted earlier in this thread (I think it was in here) that consonants seem to be handled on the left side of the brain (structurally) and vowels are handled by the 'nature sound' area of the brain on the right. Also, the initial pattern of phonemes is shifted around at times. Some aspects diminished some enhanced. This is what I was talking about with the indians who heard "Ticksitatl' from the hoot owl. The brain alters the sounds of what you hear, what you pay attention to. The oriental misconception of l for r, for another example. Next, it is passed along to the area that will process the 'word'. It will toss it around a bit and come up with a likely winner, then kicks it up to context. Syntax. What is the word likely to be in regards to the whole sentence. Etc... Associations being added and subtracted along the way. Although, I think that subtracted is more likely seing as how the frontal lobe is a 'straightjacket' for the mind. Get some frontal lobe damage and you'll start rambling like an idiot. Associations flowing freely. So freely that they degenerate into madness. Anyway, so syntax is taken care of. It may need to toss it back to Wernicke's area for more temporal association every now and again. Other areas of the brain for their associations. Then if you want to say 'mama' it heads up to Broca's area. To Exner's if you want to write it. All this moving about is thought. With Darwinian competition going on at each step to settle on the most fit patterns. In many ways (I feel), you can look at the brain as a computer program. Functions are supposed to be transparent. One function doesn't have any knowledge of the functioning of another function. The less 'inside' information passed the better. In a way, Calvin's view is very musical. An orchestra of 300 key pianos tossing a tune back and forth. Each lending it's piece to the tune. Always tending towards something more fitting. To add to the piano metaphor, it would have to be a room with some type of acoustic property of jumbling the sounds. Not sure if echo room would be the perfect analogy. Not sure how often this 'jumble' might be seen as 'duplication'. Hmm. I can see this baseline as being a... propensity for a certain type of response from a particular group our subgroup of areas. I can assume that your baseline is similar to the resonance and grooves that Calvin speaks of. It sounds very similar. It would be very elusive, I think, to come up with any one 'baseline'. It is constantly changing. Evolving to become more and more fit. This baseline brings to mind the base 'you'. When you became a man. I think it's far more elusive than that. I am not the me from 5 years ago and he was not the me from 5 years before that. The patterns and the propensity for patterns changes. Hopefully for the better if one stimulates the competition enough with a variety of stimuli and thought. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Although, there are almost definitely long-held, deeply-burned-in patterns. And the earliest patterns seem to often be the most keenly etched. The whole critical period scenario.
Here's a way to look at the passing of information. The information comes in through a sensory path. It's analyzed at it's most basic levels. Amygdalla and deep emotional responses checked for. Then it starts getting narrowed down. It gets passed around from here to there like a waiter walking through a restaurant with a phone on a tray yelling out "Telephone call, Telephone call for somebody. You sir, is this your call?' "Well, interesting though it may be, I believe that it actually in regards to consonants. Maybe you could try him.' And so on. Each time it's tried on for size, a new definition is placed on it. Either an added twist or, more likely, a restriction. A narrowing down of the concept. Make sense? Edit: Oh, forgot to add the jumbling effect in. Hmm. I'm tapped on metaphor for now. I'll think on it. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I was just thinking of how you could encode information onto a crystal, or a hologram, kind of in the same terms of the conversation here. I was thinking about addressing, and how an item from short term gets transferred to long term, and sorted out into whatever fragments it does. I was thinking if you had a preexisting hologram sitting there, and you get new hologram representative of part of the existing one.. you scan through the pre-existing one and when a match occurs, you know it because they add and it stands out. Seemed relevant but I don't know... it was just a passing thought that I don't remember having before and it seemed like it might help in thinking about addressing from short to long term. (how does the short term know where to go). Some kind of lock and key thing, based in current stimulous and thought to trigger the right things as thought needs them. I guess the 'new hologram' could also be created by thought or 'imagination'. Meh, maybe that's pointless, pardon. I'll try to tackle your huge post sometime, it was all quite interesting.
You should. Break it into segments. It may be long, but it clearly (to me) answers several of your questions. By answering them, I solidified my knowledge (somewhat) of the theory at hand. And, if you don't read it (short attention span havin' bastard! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) then, the short answer is that I don't think that any of these things are proven in any way. It's calvin's theory. But, an interesting theory. I wish that there were some neurobiologists in here who could give us an insight into what they might think of it. The crystal... Interesting. Definitely has similar connotations. Definitely. But, As I will get into, the Darwinian competition must take place, a competition between variants. Only the strong survive. And, the question with this crystalline structure is how would the grooves be laid down? How would they change? Be reinforced or deinforced (word?)? Our memories and thoughts are based on many factors. Emotional content. Background noise. Amount of stimulation. Length of stimulation. Dietary conditions. The list is almost endless if you think about it. All these things contribute to how well any particular pattern or pattern of patterns might do on the field of battle. The field of our cortex. "How does the short term know where to go?" I'd say that it doesn't. It just goes and whereever it flourishes it flourishes. It's competition. It survives where it will and dies where it won't. There is no knowing involved. Knowing is added later. It's a myth. A fallacy. A schema. The stimulus and associations are part of the background patterns of a particular field. Certain ideas will flourish where others will die. It is the amount of stimulation and 'importance' to us (among other things) that determines what is right and when they are needed. I really should get the next segment out of the way. It might answer a lot of these questions you have. I begin to think that I come to understand it very well now. On at least a limited level.
smooooooooooooch I'm constructing the next chapter of the story, but am not ready to post yet. Meanwhile, during the researching I have found this: Attractor: If you plot one variable against another for a series of times, the successive points may seem to move along a trajectory, often a cyclical one. This phase portrait may well look like an oddly-shaped orbit around an imaginary gravitational attractor, from whence the name. All of my chaotic illustrations are in such a phase space. There are four general classes of attractors: point (say, the neuron's resting state), periodic (as in pacemaker cells), quasi-periodic, and chaotic. The magnets in my loopy illustrations serve as a stand-in for a quasi-periodic attractor, as would an organ pipe. Whereas pipes have well-defined harmonics, chaotic attractors have overtones everywhere, in the manner of white noise. Chaotic systems are highly sensitive to initial conditions; while somewhat predictable in the short run, they may do surprising things in the long run. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Vert: No- don't. Not just yet or you will end up confusing us further than you have. Perhaps "confuse" is not the word, yet I'm wondering where you are going with this. It's Calvin's theory on brain structure and function resembling something like a competetive wasp nest- but where is this going? Simply illustrating it? Speaking of this, I'm going to go off on some minor points before getting to the meat of the matter. When you brought up chaos-attractor the term was vaguely familiar- kept getting a whiff of where did I hear this, where did I read it? And it hit me that way back in golden days (with astronomy teacher) he spoke to me of fractals when I was trying to tackle a TOE, in trying to bring all the forces together as one. Stupidity, surely, but I least I learned what I could- my idea centered around all these forces being melted as one in something as heated as a quasar, that the extremeties of a black hole were not needed to see these four forces as One and I imagined that 12 or 15 billion years ago all four of these forces were one Prime Energy Quanta in a singularity that after The Bang spilled out and were mutilated into four different forces fractally. If you could find this fractal pattern, you've solved Weingber's Dream for a theory of everything. The hexagonals also put me in mind of glial cells 'talking' with each other via calcium. Ok, now where was I? MEAT OF THE MATTER It was mentioned somewhere that perhaps we are both wrong on what cerebral mechanisms take care of what, and that what may be responsible for our being 'wrong' is that we are basing our ideas on outdated models. NOT SO, and I've found why you may think so. Becuase I've left something out. You can be found in this thread wondering and wondering why it is that the temporal lobes should be responsible for religious obsessions since its simply an audiatary assoiation area mostly, some use in memory, language of course being its main staple. But so are other parts of the brain resposible for this, as the hippocampus is essential in memory and blah blah. Then why should the left temporal lobe be so obsessed with Jesus? And I've been sitting here saying its the left, its the left, its the LEFT temporal lobe responsible for religous zealotry and from here, doing nothing else with it, I tie up man's religion with language since these two phemomena seemed linked by simple location. HOWEVER. I've deigned on something I left out. Its not just the stimulation of this lobe with EM waves that will have a human experiencing God, so to speak, its also the stimulating of the parietal lobe simultaneously that is key in doing it. I never once thought that both should be in conjuntion to have this effect. Here is how it works: The right hemispheere, as we know, is a space specialist. The pareital lobe on that side is responsible for body discrimination and it is becuase of its processiong data concerned with our bodies that we have some rudimentary notion of Self- damage it and you are left with faulty propioception, disoriented to place. It is when BOTH the temporal and parietal lobes are stimulated or somehow traumatized by epilepsy that this strange phenomena of religious dissociaton takes place- what is absolutely fascinating in this is that that all that do expriene the obessessive type of temporal lobe epilepsy also experience a presence of an Unexplained Other in the room or space with them. So imagine this: if I stimulate your pareital lobe all on its own, I can fuck with your feelings of Self- you would feel yourself float in and out of your body or forget that one half of your body even exists depending on what I do to you. If I stimulate your temporal lobe all on its own you will have trouble deciphering what I am saying or expressing what you wish to say- also, memories would come poring out like waterfalls and you would remember things you never even knew were in memory. But if I stimulate BOTH simultaneously, the seat of language in conjuction with the seat of Self, a strange curiousity ensues: Self rises out of the pareital lobe as it becomes dissaciated as something like a ghost from the grave and the left is confused by this presence before it- it looks across the corpus collussum as if it were looking over a cemetary gate and says "Lo! What is this? 'tis a soul, built of gossamer and knows me not. I grow scared at the very thought of not knowing it" And is the interpreter not on the left side? Where this temporal lobe is now being stimulated? And is the interpreter not always trigger happy with its need to label unknowns? And so, as this Self is rising from the parietal lobe, the left is forced to label it with a word, and the feelings of Self carries with it a human connotation. Therefore, the label it places on this displaced self rising from the pareital lobe that is being stimulated with electromagentic waves then is "Man" or "Person" and VOILA, this newly made person whose 'presence' is felt is called Spirit or Jehohavah or Allah or fairy depending on what this person has been conditioned to find as divine. In my mind, I capture this with a metaphor: the self rising out of the right is a walking corpse rising up from its tomb and the person labelling that corpse is the interpreter mechanism calling it "Lazarus". He is Jesus. GORGEOUS CONNECTIONS! I revel in headnoise.
Hmm. Good question. I suppose the question is is this even pertinent to this conversation at all? I don't know. You know that I have a propensity to add more than is... required. I brainstorm and end up on another planet at times. Is this the case now? The first installment was an explanation of why and how Calvin came up with this hexagonal theory. The basic functioning of the neurons and all that. It is necessary to first understand this before I am able to explain the next bit on competition (the most exciting to my mind). Because it relies on this idea of patterns in cortical space. And, this idea of competition is required to explain the meat of what I was getting at, Esperanto's Apple. Which deals with how a single pattern might be used throughout the brain despite the jumbling effect that comes from the incoherence of the nerve highways. Hmm. You mention the corpus callosum later. This jumbling would take place along this highway as well. Without a means of standardizing patterns, our minds would get hopelessly entangled in a recursive loop. Gibberish would follow. Inefficiency. Interesting. I've never studied fractals to a great extent. And my knowledge of cosmology is similarly shaky, although stronger than my fractal knowledge. Me too. The glial cells would likely come into play in the field of competition as well. They decide which synapses flourish and which fail. They are the shepards of our domesticated brain cells. Seemingly. Possibly. Poetically. I've been meaning to mention this, but constantly forgetting. The right side of the brain is active in prayer. This kinda jeopardizes what we're doing here, just a bit. But not really. For, as you just said, the right and the left must work in harmony. In cases of severe left hemispheric damage, this urge to spontaneously (my emphasis) pray does not necessarily relate to the same thing in a healthy brain where the urge to pray carries on to a more structured religion. To a defined god. Animism. It might be equivalent to that vague sense of awe that I felt in my unconsciousness event. The question (and one I haven't seen answered well) is is the limbic system split laterally? We have two amygdallas. Two hippocampuses. Etc... And they are buried within the right and the left hemisphere's of the brain. But, are there functionings split in any way? They communicate via the anterior callosum (I believe), a smaller highway than the corpus callosum. I don't understand if there is a difference in the left vs. right in the limbic system. It's never spoken of in such a way which leads on to believe that they are not so differentiated. But... Hmm. I'll have to think on this a bit more. Oh, and another thing. You keep mentioning stimulating areas of the brain to get these effects. Stimulating the brain with mild electric shocks usually deadens that area. The functioning of that patch of brain is stopped not stimulated. I think that there might be areas of the brain where this is different. And, it is also mentioned that areas of burned in patterns, such as in an epileptic's brain, this stimulation might bring forth the burned in whatever and also a possible seizure. But, I get your point and in an epileptic's brain it wouldn't be artificial stimulation. It would be all natural, baby. Where did this come from, by the way? Source? Interesting. And, it brings to mind the fragmenting of the various selves of even the one side. If the parietal were damaged or undergoing a seizure, might not the integration that occurs there not happen properly? Would we not split into three? Auditory self, Visual self, and tactile self. Throw in the strangeness coming from the other hemisphere and the limbic system and what do you have? The question about the emanations from the right is... Would this emotional tinge carry into these three selves of the left or seem distinct? Perhaps there would be different instances where different associations arise. Very interesting indeed. And this would be the difference I spoke of between the spontaneous prayer of the damaged brain above and the structured construction of schema by a mostly healthy brain. In the severely damaged brain, the interpreter would likely be absent. If it wasn't absent then it would have no words to construct with and would just spout garbage (but emotional garbage), sounds a bit like speaking in tongues... hmmm.
Almost ten. Quickie: I read that- Universal Lanuage in Naked Neuron. I tend to think of the limbic systems simply as gushing the fuel for this human need to pray. More like not really. I tend to ignore Joseph when what he is saying does not jive with what I wish for him to say. More later. Interesting to think we're the only species with hemispheric brains that are lopsided. Or it seems like it- you went to out to check and found nothing some pages ago. Look this up: Dr. Michael Persinger, he says: "It may seem sacrilegous and presumptious to reduce God to a few ornary synapses, but modern neuroscience is not shy about defining our most sacred notions- love, joy , altruism, pity-as nothing more than STATIC from our impressiviley large cerebrum" I'm reminding myself just now to quit pointing out the human cerebrum as impressive or marvelous or examplory- its almost like my dog sitting around fascinated with his snout. Presumptious bitch. And lastly- its not direct electrical stimulation. A patient is placed in a chamber with sinosoids zapping out specific electomagentic wavelengts in low energies- nothing gets damaged. Its almost as if a doctor is blowing on it.
Oh, come now. That's no way to treat your sources. There's always a way around. And, you know you'd rather reach an accord rather than a discord. Wouldn't you? I think that the answer is in the right brain providing emotionally gushing fuel as you say. The left with language is needed to rationalize the irrationality of the right and limbic. Yeah, just that one bit from NIMH on monkey talk. The beginnings of lateralization in monkeys. What kind of monkeys? I dunno. Rhesus probably, eh? The thing is that I could find no studies on chimps or other apes more closely related to us than monkeys. If I were looking for lateralization it would be in chimps not rhesus monkeys. That's the problem with the internet. Hopefully someday it'll get it's shit together and maybe some useful research could be done on it without too much wading through extraneous garbage. I'll look up Doc Persinger. And the the sinosoid (selonoid?) stimulation makes sense. I see how it's not at all the same as direct electrical stimulation. It goes through the skull? No invasive measures needed?
Vert: Was being sarcastic. However, Joseph does tend to go off on these nonproductive tangents as when he tried to explain dancing. None at all. From my understanding of it, its the use of specific wavelength magnetofields- here in my notes I've got it jotted down as TMC for trancranial magnetic stimulation. You can zap any part of the brain and stimulate its function. I wrote: "..and I suggest going for a small area in front of the thalamus smack dab tin the middle of the brain- a thousand delicious orgasms all rolled into One." Speaking of the septal nucleus. Also, Rosa had given me this a long time ago via pm (interval for retrieval) Its in the second case where Kabballah and all its siblings are born. All would have been born stillborn if it weren't for language. It seems this thread has done died. For what its worth, on our theories that will never stir the ears of the science world because we are seen as eccentric (FUCK YOU ALL. INCLUDING YOU, MR. THORN): "The conventional scientist is consumed with doubts, and is constantly scripting scenarios in which his theory turns out to be mistaken.....but for the eccentric scientist, concerns about validation are ignored in the intoxicating rush that accompanies discovery. Once the breakthrough has been made, this scientist typically feels himself to be propelled forward to make future conquests. His talent for imaginative elaboration seems to him to be limitless." - from Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness We, as eccentric obsessivos, compensate for our lack of critical perspective with the indefatiguable optimism of our nature. Orthodox sciene is stuffy and rigid and can only compensate for its depressing inequities with things just as depressing, never satisfying: money, status, success. The joy of discovery is compensation enough, thank you very much.
My shamefully erroneous guess on Esperanto's Apple: Considering Esperanto is a name used for a structural language, I take it this apple is used to illustrate its growth. Fruits, like an apple, gather their sustenance form the roots. A seed is sown and tiny branches shoot out to absorb nitrogenous mierals from the fertile soil. This allows the seed to sprout and out comes a shoot peeking out from the ground. This cohesive growth, from the basest elements to the fullness of an apple is analogous to the growth of a language. Grunts being the nutrients in the soil, the seed being something like the left temporal lobe, and angular gyrus the tiny branches shotting out from this seed to focus and direct all the incoming, nutritious grunts to make data. Words. And thus, a language is born with language being the cohesive whole of an apple.
You're right. It's erroneous. But not shamefully so. Your failure comes in thinking metaphorically. Calvin is a motor systems neurologist. You can tell from the one installment of the theory I have so far that this is the case. He comes at it from the ground up rather than the clouds down. I won't sully this thread with the rest of his theory. You're undoubtably right about it not belonging in here. I also don't have a full grip on the mechanics of his theory which are detailed in his other book, The Cerebral Code. So, once I read that book and gain a more full undestanding, I will start a thread discussing it. I will say this about the apple. Try to explain as well as I might without a full explanation, it has to do with the concept of choirs. I've explained how Calvin believes that concepts are formed by patterns (or patterns of patterns) within cellular assemblies shaped hexagonally approx. 0.5 mm to a side composed of about 300 minicolumns or 30000 neurons. In my next installment, I would have explained how these hex's interact in a cortical area. Each particular area of the brain is predisposed to handle a certain type of concept. A certain type of association and pattern. So, a pattern starts in a cortical area and begins to spread due to the odd properties of the surface pyramidal neuron to skip connections, the express train. The pattern begins to acquire territory. It also at some points mutates into a new pattern. And also competes with other patterns that use the same space. We have Darwin's laws of competition at work here. Lots of factor involved on which survive and which don't. The point is that there is a competition and a weeding out of unfit patterns. Now, the competition doesn't need a clear winner. It just needs to reach a point where it goes over a certain boundary. Once the group of choirs become loud enough it is passed to another area as a likely candidate for whatever word or thought is needed by whatever function is being carried out. The highways by which the patterns are transferred (The longitudinal and arcuate fasciculus) are not coherent pathways. Meaning they jumble the patterns. Not only this, but they diffuse it as well seeing as how they spread out for a few mm once they reach the target cortex. So, let A=Apple. A gains ground in the Wernicke's area of the Temporal and is passed to the angular gyrus for further association. When it reaches it's location, it has now become jumbled and is now f(A). Well, it's possible that in the angular gyrus f(A) is just it's way of saying A, right? Well, what happens if/when it get's passed back to the area from which it started? This happens quite a bit in feedback loops. f(A) becomes g(A). So, maybe the temporal recognizes g(A) as A? Surely it's possible, but the problem is that the needed associations with jumbled patterns rises quickly. Exponentially. As you add in more and more areas of the brain, more and more time must be required in order to determine which particular pattern is meant by some jumbled pattern. The process by which this occurs is likely in lower animals. It is slow and inefficient. But they don't require much so it works on some levels. However, with the choirs comes a means of correcting this error. When the signal reaches the new area of the brain, it begins to compete once more. And there is another factor I mentioned in the first installment, the grooves of the phonograph record. Or the chaotic attractor. The area of cortex has a likelihood of reverting to a certain state. In this way, with the combination of choirs competing for voice and the groove laid down in the cortex, the jumbled pattern becomes unjumbled and A=A everywhere in the brain. Esperanto's Apple. I've vastly simplified this of course. I'll start a thread on it someday. As I said, the most exciting part to me is the competition and evolution in the choirs. It seems so fitting that the brain should work in such a manner.
Thought so. But I liked it. Rhizomes shooting out from a seed into wordy soil to make lanugage......almost like Wessy's gooey river. Now, before you start your little thread clarify something. I understand that the kernel in this conceptual growth theory of his are hexagonal cells fractions of a mm apart. And as a stimulus grows, there is "applause" competing to burn this impulse into the cortex, as something like the grooves on a record. This process is chaotic in lower mammals as they lack simultaneity in this applause- which is why concepts never solidify or get burned into the cortex. Only with the simultaneously of a choir can you have Esperanto’s apple then. Yes or no? Still don't see why the bleeding hell they call it an Apple. And Esperanto I took to be a language, not a cognitive theory.
Yes, but it also deviates from the preexisting grooves and also moves towards a preexisting groove. It's all about Darwinian competition. The fittest patterns flourish. The grooves would be something like an environmental factor to competition. The grooves are there because memory persists even after coma and seizure. Memory must be physical rather than ephemeral. The patterns don't have to remain active. No, concepts do get burned into their cortex. Don't they? Depends on how far down you go of course, but animals have memory. I suppose that instinct would be a natural groove that doesn't allow much deviation from a standard. Perhaps. Yes, because it depends on the competition taking place. You can't have competition without multiple instances of a pattern. And also, there must be competing patterns. Calvin mentions the necessity of transcoding errors. How DNA was actually discovered by lookiing for something that could be transcribed imperfectly. Here's a list of the competition factors: Apple for the concept of a word. And Esperanto? Not really sure. Something to do with Universal Language in the brain. I didn't understand the Esperanto reference until you mentioned it. That's what inspired me to bring it in. As to starting a new thread, it will be a bit. I've got too many things on my plate at the moment. Plus, the Cerebral Code is an online book. And I HATE reading online books for some reason. I need the feel of paper and weight for some reason. I suppose I could go down to the library and see if they have a copy. I probably will. But, I have a few others to get to first. I'd rather reinvigorate this thread or start a new thread devoted to your theory than start a thread on Calvin just yet. So, we'll see how long it will be.
Gendy and Invert: The way I was describing it before the grooves are the dendryte-dendryte, dentryte - nueron connections. The "meaning" associated with a particular "basis" or whatever the shit I was calling it would be stored in the complex underlying emotional stuff, which could be stored in any number of manners. Perhaps the wiring of the connections themselves actually invokes a particular emotional reflection onto the current thought process. I mean in the sense of the activation of the larger structure into "near thought", the activation of the whole thing gives you a "feeling" from which you derive "meaning" associated with the underlying conceptual detail (information and relationships with other concepts), as it is those very concepts that are laced with the "feelings" as it is activated into "near thought" or the "subconscious" that is available for processing in the short short term. Rather, that which is "down hill" from where your current thought is at. Totally. If the whole circuit were active at a given time: seizure. Yeah I've argued with Gendy about this one. I think animals have concepts in a very very simplistic way. They cannot be honed due to lack of language. Side thought: Can there be intelligence without a survival instinct? Doesn't that drive all other systems? It's what drove them to be. Getting them otherwise seems like folly? Only for the moment I hope. I don't know if you can say they exist exclusively in the cortex, as I'd guess they get wrapped up in all kinds of other stuff. Maybe that's just wrong. I need that MRI scan of a working brain at the nueron level damnit. That and a couple of those pictures invert posted to map it out. Hey I just remembered there is a project underway to map a brain to that level of detail. They're slicing up a cadaver brain and mapping that bitch. It's supposed to take like 15 or 20 years. Maybe you can think of it as destructive and constructive interference in the harmonies of the choir. which has to come in biochemical form, directing the connection and destruction of those connections I spoke about above. To what extent? I see copies coming from short term to long term, growing there and sticking, other patterns adding to or taking from that basis. New similar stimulous would create a biochemical signature that would lead down the dendritic pathways to the basis, activating it to near or current thought and connecting/disconnecting based on the variances or 'interference' with the existing basis. Hold on I just realized I don't know what you mean by "cloning mechanism". Hmm... I dunno. I think maybe you're saying what I'm saying, except more clearly. I think of it as A being something that's already there, just connecting itself in different ways to other things. Maybe you're talkign about new inputs, A and A', but do they compete? Are you talking about pattern recognition? Fuck I lost my train of thought from confusion. I guess I don't know what your competition is competing for. If you're talking about interconnections of nuerons, I don't understand the requirement of A'. I dig it for pattern recognition, but I'd think that a biochemical messenger would have to contain the right information to get to the location (it chemical composition containing a switiching mechism that by its nature opens the gates to get where it carved the path the first time it went there like the erosion of the grand canyon sort of, and deliver a package or "song" in the sense of a choir that partially blends and partially destructs the song that was going on when it got there. Yeah man I'm just not sure. I read it one way and it's the same thing I'm saying only slightly different, and the other I get all confused. That threw me off and I can't handle the rest at this time.
I love you Damn you Wes! You're gonna make me explain this after all. Aren't you? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Ok, I'll start digging into it again. (I took a bit of a breather from this particular author for awhile since this thread cooled.) And I'll come up with something to hold you over until I start a new thread on it. Basically where you're problems come in is about the cloning process which indicates to me that you don't understand what I'm saying by Darwinian competition. Perhaps a couple of pics will help. <img src="http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/4426/lemfield1si.jpg"> <img src="http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/4366/lemdarwiniancompetition7nv.jpg"> It's far too late, and I'm going to have to dig once more into both books to come up with a succinct explanation for your questions, but perhaps these pics will clear up the concept a bit. Remember, it's competition. That's where the cloning comes in. It's the pattern reproducing itself in the cortical tissue. The field of dreams. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! And also remember, patterns are passed back and forth from many areas of the brain. No one area of the brain really holds onto a pattern for any great length of time. As it's passed around, each area of the brain adds it's own little touch to the basic melody of the pattern. Remember. Each hex is basically a 300 key piano. That's it for now. I'll come back with more tomorrow. After sleep. Insomnia doesn't lead to the sharpest enunciation of ideas. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Heh. Never did get to Darwinian Competition. But, it seems Wes lost interest anyway. Don't worry, I'll start a thread about Calvin's theory in particular once I have all the details figured out. Reading The Cerebral Code and maybe a couple other of his books are going to be crucial in understanding it. I've also meant to go back over this thread and try to revive the original topic or at the least, glean the contents and start a new thread with a condensed form of Gendanken's theory (my version of it) and loose ends and start fresh with it. But, I've also not done that. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Perhaps it's good. We chewed over this idea quite a bit. Now is the time to let the details sit and percolate a bit. Some quiet reflection and solidification of what we have come to understand in this thread. Have faith, I will start a new thread on Language and Religious Abstraction. It's just a matter of time. I also have nothing of great import to post at the moment other than the above promises of threads to be, except for this. It's not quite what you had in mind, Gendanken. But it might inspire some additional thought in your mind. After all, things seem to come in threes. Perhaps it's not the top angle that's illusive, but rather the triangle itself? <img src="http://www.sciforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3145&stc=1">
Fuck off, Professor. I wish I'd caught you spamming this thread back when it was fresh. I'd have fucked you a new asshole. Stay the fuck out of this thread!
