Originally posted by Dolos
The brain's tasks are separated into regions; one part of the brain works differently from another -- and different parts of the brain rarely interact
when did you become a phrenologist?
EDIT: let me blow your mind, there are no tasks the brain performs that do not require a huge network of interconnected brain areas. /fact.
Originally posted by Oliver North
when did you become a phrenologist?
I would have never guessed he was gravitating towards phrenology. I would have assumed something like "neuroepistemology" since that is more mysterious and sexy sounding.
But, in reality, it seems more like he is talking about this.
Originally posted by dadudemon
I would have never guessed he was gravitating towards phrenology. I would have assumed something like "neuroepistemology" since that is more mysterious and sexy sounding.But, in reality, it seems more like he is talking about this.
sure, it is more often called "localization of function" in what I read, but sure. Most people doing neuro work sort of laugh at the way such regional specificity was embraced in the 90s, because in hindsight, results were all over the map and fMRI is certainly not the perfect tool that early research using it suggested. Additionally, a lot of the localization of function research focused on people who had injuries to various areas, and often conflated ideas of what was necessary for a behaviour versus what was sufficient, ie: simply because you had an injury to area X and saw behaviour change Y, you can't say X is responsible for Y, only that knocking X out has an impact on Y (very similar to the issue of correlation and causation).
In light of modern techniques and theories, this early tendency to label the "parts" of the brain using fMRI technology often gets compared to phrenology and can be seen, at best, as a "pop" understanding of neurological organization. The networks and systems that are interconnected are far more important to information processing than is the functional specificity of various areas. For instance, the visual cortex does process information coming from the eye, however, the processes of "seeing" involves areas ranging from the eye to pre-frontal cortex and several systems and pathways of information processing, many not exclusively related to vision. "Sight" is not localized anywhere in the brain, and every other human behaviour can be described in the same way.
Originally posted by Oliver North
sure, it is more often called "localization of function" in what I read, but sure. Most people doing neuro work sort of laugh at the way such regional specificity was embraced in the 90s, because in hindsight, results were all over the map and fMRI is certainly not the perfect tool that early research using it suggested. Additionally, a lot of the localization of function research focused on people who had injuries to various areas, and often conflated ideas of what was necessary for a behaviour versus what was sufficient, ie: simply because you had an injury to area X and saw behaviour change Y, you can't say X is responsible for Y, only that knocking X out has an impact on Y (very similar to the issue of correlation and causation).In light of modern techniques and theories, this early tendency to label the "parts" of the brain using fMRI technology often gets compared to phrenology and can be seen, at best, as a "pop" understanding of neurological organization. The networks and systems that are interconnected are far more important to information processing than is the functional specificity of various areas. For instance, the visual cortex does process information coming from the eye, however, the processes of "seeing" involves areas ranging from the eye to pre-frontal cortex and several systems and pathways of information processing, many not exclusively related to vision. "Sight" is not localized anywhere in the brain, and every other human behaviour can be described in the same way.
From all the fMRI images I have seen, lights of pretty little things are going on, all the time, when various tests are done. If I had time, I'd find several images to make your point. Sure, there is a higher level of activity in certain areas depending on the "stimulus", but it is not as though everything shuts down except for one particular area.
Translation: you're right and I could prove veyr simply it if I wasn't lazy.
don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that stuff isn't organized by function in some ways. LOL, get me started on orientation pinwheels in the first layer of V1 some day 😉
The issue is that, the real story about human behaviour is in the connections and the networks. This is why DTI is such an exciting technology. At this point, if only there were a way to know which axonal connections were active at any given time, it would be amazing. However, it is important to remember, each technology we have at the moment comes with a downside:
EEG or other technologies that rely on detecting electrical signals from neurons has the issue of not being able to localize where the electrical signal is coming from (it is getting better, but certainly can't localize activity as well as fMRI). fMRI, while having incredible spatial acuity, has a lag of about 10 seconds (if you want I can explain why, which would also elaborate on a number of other fMRI issues), and because of this, can't get the best "moment by moment" data on processing. Additionally, in both cases, you use what is called "the method of subtraction", where you subtract out activity from a control condition from an experimental condition, ignoring the fact that all the stuff subtracted was clearly necessary for the behaviour.
Basically, the idea of "X area causes X behaviour" is dead, and the modern equivalent of phrenology.
Originally posted by Oliver North
when did you become a phrenologist?EDIT: let me blow your mind, [b]there are no tasks the brain performs that do not require a huge network of interconnected brain areas.
/fact. [/B]
Why don't these trans-regional interactions cause sensory pathways to be altered?
Is it that altered perception that gives a savant this sort of pocket intelligence, this superior procedure: I.E. Grapheme-color, Spatial Sequence, Sound to color, number form, personification, lexical, auditory tactile, mirror???
I that what I'd -- through self-experimentation -- try to emulate?
Am I trying to interconnect not just brain areas, but pocket intelligences? Shifting in and out of savant-mode -- and creating new pocket intelligences from this multisensory integration meant for specific tasks?
Here's what I'm trying to convey here, mapping synesthesia-based combinations to tap into areas of the brain, trying to bring about all possible alterations to the senses, to see what the brain is fully capable of. One optimized set of combinations. Think of the movie Limitless. Obviously the brain uses all its energy, but does it use it with 100% efficiency? Obviously not, as savants have more efficient procedures within their pocket intelligences. Accordingly (that is automatically and adaptively) altering senses to make procedures easier, optimizes efficiency, yes?
The brain initiative is a start, mapping the neural-network, every synaptic reaction, is a start.
Originally posted by Dolos
Why don't these trans-regional interactions cause sensory pathways to be altered?
these pathways become non-plastic very early in life. Sensory pathways may only be surpassed by motor pathways in terms of how early they form and how stable their connections are. The clearest example may be in language learning:
I recently started (sort of) learning Arabic. I am an exclusively English speaker, with some French (Canadian law requires it [my Arabic is probably better than my French at this point, though both would be considerably weak]). In English, vowels generally only have a single sound. In Arabic, the "A", "I" and "U" sound have both long and short versions, denoted by either a standard character or accent, respectively. In fact, in Arabic, there are distinct symbols for roughly 5 sounds that, in English, would be conveyed by the letter "A/a" (Ayn, Hamza, Alif, etc).
An infant, who has yet to learn a dominant language, is sensitive to all of these distinctions. Even if they are exposed to only English in their early life, at first, they would be able to distinguish the "th" sound in "three" and "these" [the former sounds more like an "f", the latter a "v"; in Arabic. these are different letters entirely]. However, as they learn the language, such distinctions are condensed into single phonemes for that language and become almost impossible to distinguish between. As a primarily English speaker, it will probably take you a few tries to intuitively hear the distinction between different "th" sounds, it certainly did for me.
These pathways are cemented and remain non-plastic from very early in childhood development. For instance, every phoneme is condensed before a child learns a language. The reason for this is simple also: Think about written language. Depending on who is writing, there are thousands of possible shapes the letter "A" could take, yet the brain is sensitive to almost all of them (it takes very poor penmanship for a person to be incapable of reading what is written). The brain learns the dominant form of language and builds its sensitivity to variance from there. All sensory systems are like this, however, built in a much more fundamental way than language is. Activation of certain rods and cones in the eye is genetically associated with various pathways and reflexes. These are entirely insensitive to plasticity. Sensory experience is something that you almost cannot change via plasticity, and you as an organism benefit from that... Imagine if you could "consciously" change things like size-consistency (the idea that objects of the same size appearing farther away look larger), it would be impossible for you to navigate the real world. In fact, optical illusions take advantage of this non-plastic processing. Various illusions take advantage of this, and even knowing the minutia of which neurons are causing what cannot prevent seeing the illusion [if you need me to be pedantic and post examples, I will].
Originally posted by Dolos
synesthesia
There is a conference called VSS (the annual meeting of the Vision Science Society). It is held in Florida every year, and I've been privileged to present research there twice in my career (2009 and 2013 iirc). They have what are called "Symposia" each day, where talks are held on various issues. In 2009 I got to watch a series of talks on issues of synestesia. I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but your concept of what synestesia is seems, again, to be based on something you might have read in "Time" magazine or some other popular publication, and not the actual research being done in the field of synestesia. For instance, there is nobody who suggests that sysestesia may be the cause of "savant"-esque abilities in people with autism, especially given synestesia is primarily an issues with the confusion of sensory signals, not a catch all phrase for neurological cross-talk.
LOL, I've given way too much credit to your troll tactics, so consider this a W if that is all you are looking for...
Troll tactics? This is my topic, if I go on off-topic explorations (that I'm genuinely interested in); I'm trolling myself.
Are you saying I'm attempting to fool people and when that doesn't work I resort to trolling? No, I'm getting thoughts out of my head and into scrutiny, it's just in a very choppy way.
Originally posted by Oliver NorthA little too time-consuming, but I get your point.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
Originally posted by Oliver NorthI agree with you comparison.
YouTube video
Do I want to change? Of course. Am I willing to make the sacrifices (taking the time to actually learn) necessary for change, that's more important.
Originally posted by Oliver North
YouTube video
Quite interesting. I had no idea that people used non-locality in such a way.
Edit -I must say, the more I see of Sam Harris, the more I like. For me, the biggest reason I like him is how he is not a douchebag when he disagrees.
Originally posted by dadudemon
Quite interesting. I had no idea that people used non-locality in such a way.
It is a really common thing when you debate consciousness with people. Especially because of people like Penrose.... /bleh
Originally posted by dadudemon
Edit -I must say, the more I see of Sam Harris, the more I like. For me, the biggest reason I like him is how he is not a douchebag when he disagrees.
Sam Harris is one of my favorite modern thinkers for exactly that reason. Also because he is of the same opinion as me regarding the personal use of drugs (using MDMA was one of the most relevant experiences in his life as a neuroscientist).