Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
May 27, 2014 - 09:36pm PT
|
It's amazing to me that in 2014 people still consider the neural/body system a black box, even as research reveals its evolutionary pedigree and functionality, step by step.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
May 27, 2014 - 09:45pm PT
|
It's amazing to me that in 2014 people still consider the neural/body system a black box, even as research reveals its evolutionary pedigree and functionality, step by step.
I think that we still don't have an explanation, read this article from today in the NYTimes Science section:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/science/all-circuits-are-busy.html
saying that we have an explanation is different from saying we have an approach which we believe will deliver an explanation.
And that includes figuring out what the missing pieces of the science is (if there is something missing). Figuring out the "conectome" will take time, and will probably not answer the question that Largo is asking.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
May 27, 2014 - 10:05pm PT
|
Aaaaand I said neither that we have an explanation nor an approach that will provide one.
What I did say, paraphrasing, was that, at this point, its not a black box, thus refuting the common mis-perception, so often presented here, that we know little to nothing about its inner workings. That's a far cry from either of your statements.
Scientifically speaking, of course.
Largo's question needn't be answered if it turns out to be a fictional one, which, at this point, looks increasingly likely.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
May 27, 2014 - 10:18pm PT
|
did you read the article?
what's your definition of a "black box"?
we draw boxes around the bits we can't explain, defining the inputs and the outputs and try to hypothesize what might be in the box... and then go look for those things.
evolution defines a process which we expect would arrive at "mind" (at least those of us that think this is a physical process) but we're far from a detailed description of how "mind" arrises in the evolutionary process.
that isn't saying I don't believe that there is an explanation, I'm just saying that we don't have one yet.
As for Largo's question, science may explain how "mind" arrises, but it will not be able to explain how the 80 odd years of our lives unfold within that explanation. Even understanding "mind" we will not be any closer to making sense of the path our world line takes through our existence, that thing we experience.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
May 27, 2014 - 10:31pm PT
|
As i stated - the black box I referred to was the entire neural/body system (as it relates to the topic at hand, of course - the emergence of consciousness).
How people choose to live their lives is, of course, an entirely different question far from any entertained here.
Knowing as much as possible about our evolved conscious nature informs that question, however. Why do drunks continue drinking? Why do people practice avoidance behavior? What can we expect from our relationships - and how can we make them more stable and positive? How can we get the most from our students? How can we learn faster and with better retention? How can we prevent violence?
And, looking forward - how can we more seamlessly and effectively enhance our capabilities with training, technology, etc? How can we reduce suffering from neural/body injury?
The list is endless.
|
|
PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
|
|
|
May 27, 2014 - 10:40pm PT
|
Nice article re the brain. Really quite amazing.
Thanks Ed
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
|
|
|
May 27, 2014 - 10:42pm PT
|
"Studying" mind to me is like "studying" climbing (PSP)
JL likes to use this analogy also, but IMHO it is poorly conceived. Climbing requires a strong commitment and considerable practice, yes, but it demands full use of all one’s faculties: mental, emotional, and physical. A rough analogy with using the mind would be exercising much of the resources of the mind to solve difficult problems involving applications of reason and memory, not shutting mind down systematically. This would be analogous to pausing in the middle of a climb and contemplating your naval.
Studying mind "from the inside" is a little like trying to understand the Washington Monument by assiduously polishing the steps of its internal stairwell; you may reach a state of emptiness so desperate, yet so powerful, it bathes itself in glory.
;>)
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
May 27, 2014 - 10:52pm PT
|
Damasio's approaches consciousness from an evolutionary standpoint. The story goes something like this:
Early on, the brain stem provided a proto, and later, much of the core self. The self had the evolutionary benefit of providing more complex choices for actions and responses and a means with which to optimize their value. It gave the organism an advocate.
The later development of the cerebral cortex and other components afforded the emergence of consciousness - the mind, a more robust core self, and the autobiographical self. These provided the survival benefit of more complex mapping and imaging, planning, invention, and cooperation.
The problem was glueing the cerebral cortex - with all its high level capabilities, to the lowly brain stem - still the primary seat of the proto and core selves. Rather than reinvent the wheel and overly involve the resource expensive cerebral cortex, evolution came up with an efficient solution - the thalamus (as well as other, lesser components) to integrate the Old with the New.
Pretty cool story so far.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
May 27, 2014 - 10:52pm PT
|
As i stated - the black box I referred to was the entire neural/body system (as it relates to the topic at hand, of course - the emergence of consciousness).
How people choose to live their lives is, of course, an entirely different question far from any entertained here.
Knowing as much as possible about our evolved conscious nature informs that question, however...
you don't even have an explanation of "our evolved conscious nature" so it might be a bit difficult to presume just what it will inform us on. I think you've got the applications thought out before you have the understanding of the phenomenon upon which the applications are to be based.
I wasn't asking you about which black box, I was asking for your definition of "black box" which is certainly nothing to be disparaging of, since we use it as an important element of our methodology for solving problems.
Darwin presumed that there was some physical phenomena that caused variations among individuals, and outlined what it would have to do, but he had no idea of what genetic material was in detail, it was a black box to him. And certainly he described it well enough that I consider it to be one of the very successful predictions of evolution.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
May 27, 2014 - 10:58pm PT
|
Posted too soon, apparently. Read my last post.
A brief synopsis of some of Damasio's ideas on the evolution of consciousness. They make sense to me, but I don't have anything. I'm just a guy who reads books and discusses them to form opinions. Some ideas here defy logic or seem dated. I comment on them accordingly. My comments are limited and conservative. If another poster runs with them and makes them something else, that ain't me.
I'm aware of what a black box is - and no one has disparaged that useful tool per se, only that it doesn't accurately represent the neural/body system as a whole, given the fairly large body of knowledge we now have concerning its inner workings.
Do you make sh#t up just so you can argue about it?
It would seem so.
Must be your evolved need to patronize.
Tedious. Please stop.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
May 27, 2014 - 11:05pm PT
|
ok, I'll stop... sorry you don't like be challenged, it makes it a lot harder to defend and indefensible position.
and the discussion of your evolutionary mind leaves a lot to be desired... and in particular, doesn't have much to do with evolution.
perhaps you should read something about that.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
May 27, 2014 - 11:10pm PT
|
No, I'll challenge anyone here, including you, and have.
I don't like being misquoted, nor patronized.
Most people don't.
I discussed these same ideas with an evolutionary geneticist, a viral vaccine researcher, during our run today. He seemed to think they were right on the money, but your non-practitioners mileage may vary, of course. You'd be more credible if you articulated why, perhaps. He certainly did.
Look, if you want to turn every discussion into a 9 year old's playground call out, by all means, embarrass yourself accordingly.
All I ask is that you leave me out of such nonsense. And yes, you may have the last word, if that's important to you.
Go for it.
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
|
May 28, 2014 - 12:47am PT
|
This is exciting.
I copied a little of Ed's link as regards our ability to detect motion, a central survival task. The investigator focused on unraveling the input circuitry used to produce the output decision "Yes there is motion." It relies directly on the time sequence with which activations occur, as I read it. These particular sequences would seem to be autonomous and below Hawkin's hierarchical temporal memory, a higher function. In the functions Hawkins looks at cell structures are replicated exactly.
It seems to me an important task is to find out how these input stages manage to do these specific tasks autonomously without losing all the benefits of replication. A guess might be that internal cell structures and chemistry are genetically determined just as is tissue function. Cells in the liver know they are liver cells. It is just a matter of which genes are turned on and which are turned off. Stem cell work has increased our understanding of tissue differentiation and recent work was actually able to reverse that arrow of time.
We may be getting tissue differentiation almost on a cell by cell level. If so that itself continues the replication model smoothly.
…..they proposed a mechanism for how the cell responds to motion in only one direction. It involves two other cells, bipolar cells that are excited by light and send impulses to the starburst cell.
If their analysis is right, the impulses from the bipolar cells have to reach the starburst cell simultaneously in order to make the starburst cell send out its own signal. Although one bipolar cell fires first as an object moves across the mouse’s field of vision, and another fires second, the signal of the first is delayed along the way so that the signals from both bipolar cells arrive at the starburst amacrine cell at the same time. That simultaneous stimulation causes the starburst amacrine cell to send out its own signal, which carries the news that something is moving in a particular direction on to ganglion cells and then to the brain itself. This is a simplified analysis because in reality many pairs of bipolar cells are reporting to any given starburst amacrine cell.
The system is very similar to the motion detection circuit in the fruit fly that Dmitri B. Chklovskii and his colleagues at Janelia Farm reported on last summer. Dr. Chklovskii, who is about to move to the Simons Center for Data Analysis in New York, said of Dr. Seung’s paper, “It validates our results with the fly.” And it raises all sorts of questions about how evolution produced such similar systems in such different animals with such different brains and vision systems, he said.
The reconstruction of a starburst amacrine cell (yellow) in a mouse retina, which is composed of brain tissue, and its connections to other neurons reveals the tangle of the central nervous system. Credit Alex Norton/EyeWire
Calling Dr. Seung’s hypothesis “very bold,” Dr. Chklovskii added: “There’s not much wiggle room there. It’s a very concise model, a very specific mechanism that can be tested with existing tools.” If Dr. Seung is wrong, he will be clearly wrong.
If he is right, then his findings and Dr. Chklovskii’s study are steps toward cracking the code of the brain — exactly how information is coded and travels through circuits of neurons to allow perceptions to be formed, actions to be taken and decisions to be made.
|
|
PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
|
|
|
May 28, 2014 - 01:04am PT
|
J gill said ""Studying" mind to me is like "studying" climbing (PSP)
//JL likes to use this analogy also, but IMHO it is poorly conceived. Climbing requires a strong commitment and considerable practice, yes, but it demands full use of all one’s faculties: mental, emotional, and physical. A rough analogy with using the mind would be exercising much of the resources of the mind to solve difficult problems involving applications of reason and memory, not shutting mind down systematically. This would be analogous to pausing in the middle of a climb and contemplating your naval.
Studying mind "from the inside" is a little like trying to understand the Washington Monument by assiduously polishing the steps of its internal stairwell; you may reach a state of emptiness so desperate, yet so powerful, it bathes itself in glory.
//
I am thinking this is a troll after all of the explanations regarding what meditation is and how smart you are. I will bite the hook anyway. You don't really think it is about shutting down mind systematically, do you ?. I challenge you to try to shut your mind down .
Go ahead try to shut your mind down .Try for 10 minutes and see how it goes. What does shut your mind down mean? That is total armchair talk (sorry couldn't help it).
In basic meditation instructions you are told to sit still for about 30 minutes with your back straight, so you can breath easily and fully, and you are given an object of meditation usually observing your breath and your abdomen or you can use a mantra or vipassana style has many different body sweeping exercises. They are all about observing and paying attention.
Everybody's experience from here on out is different. It is about observation not about shutting things down. It is not about getting things it is about observing things, paying attention.
What is paying attention?
A common experience is you find you can't pay attention and you get distracted by all kinds of interesting internal dialog threads that appear like clouds and pass through.
One of the most common misunderstandings is that you are supposed to stop the internal dialog. not so. You just watch it with awareness.
A certain number of people will try to meditate and will fall a sleep over and over again through the sitting period. It's just a different form of not being able to observe or be present. It is not good or bad it is just your situation to observe.
It is very physical to try to be awake but your body keeps falling asleep. I think it is probably a defense mechanism to avoid something painful in their consciousness, but I don't really know.
So it is very physical and very mental. When you sit for long periods for say one week or up to 3 plus months for 13 hours a day it is alot like wall climbing same routine day in day out with ever changing experiences and challenges and sleep is relished. What happens is your "I" is seriously challenged ; lots of self doubt mind can appear, but if you can be aware and just watch it like a cloud it will also disappear you don't have to cling to it because you think it.
Special states can come and go , in the beginning the tendency is to make a big deal out of them because they feel so intense but eventually you can just observe and realize you can't hold on to them.
Some times mind (internal dialog) falls away and things are very blissful and then mind come back on and on.
The meditation is training for when you walk out of the meditation hall and enter the big meditation hall. Can you pay attention and truly perceive what is going on and act in a clear compassionate manor, and when you make a mistake to correct it.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
May 28, 2014 - 01:18am PT
|
I trained myself to shut my mind down to the bare minimum necessary to pilot a sailing kayak across long crossings - up to 90 miles, during a trans-Caribbean trip. The idea was to remain as close to sleep as possible while maintaining
1) a background process for steering with foot pedals (autonomic after some practice - especially considering most crossings required no tacking or jibing)
2) a background process to watch for ship traffic, and
3) background process to wake up every half hour for a navigation check on the GPS.
Very few thoughts ran through my mind during these crossings - they could be pretty restful, even when it got rough in spots.
I rarely fell asleep during these crossings. The one time I did was awakened by the sound of a floating mangrove tree attempting to tear a hole in one of my inflatable sponsons (outriggers). I was 40 miles out at that point.
That's serendipity for ya.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
May 28, 2014 - 01:25am PT
|
Why do mice and insects share common neural subsystems?
Because both nervous (and vascular) systems evolved in a common ancestor.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
May 28, 2014 - 12:15pm PT
|
So I read the piece on Seung (never heard of him before) and his connectome model (never heard of the name before either). I also watched his TED piece regarding same. Except for the name, actually giving a name to the spaghetti of neural circuitry and interconnections model, I don't think anything was presented that wasn't thought about 25 years ago when I was in the field.
That specific neurons fire as a function of visual cues (edges, movements, etc.) is not new. See Torsten Wiesel and David Hubel, for example, who were all the rage in the 80s (when I was a neurobiology student) for their work in visual processing which earned them nobels.
Not sure what the aforegoing arguing was about, taking into account different levels of explanation, different contexts, perspectives and such. Is a certain climb "hard"? Well, yes or no depending on what other climb, or climbs, you have in mind and are comparing it to.
Cintune, I like this Stephen Novella guy. I'll finish his latest blog post later today I hope.
"There is no way you can prove that my light fairy does not exist."
Touche. :)
It's amazing to me that in 2014 people still consider the neural/body system a black box, even as research reveals its evolutionary pedigree and functionality, step by step.
I get this.
I think that we still don't have an explanation...
I get this, too.
I agree! :)
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - May 28, 2014 - 01:04pm PT
|
The later development of the cerebral cortex and other components afforded the emergence of consciousness - the mind, a more robust core self, and the autobiographical self.
-
I agree with John S. that "mind," especially when used as above, is virtually meaningless, especially when it is conflated with consciousness, the emergence of ego functions (provisional selves, et al), memory, and so forth, all of which are functions, NOT sentience. Demasio has simply attached ad hock names to functional aspects of brain processing.
Again, a brain is not sentient.
And Tvash, in those sweeping statements about meditation being the study of "states," who ever taught you that? That's like telling someone to heel-toe jam a face climb. It's more better to ask questions about meditation than to just lob those wild guesses out there. They're miles off the mark, while some of your other insights seem spot on and well informed.
JL
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
May 28, 2014 - 01:15pm PT
|
I described meditation as an exploration of mental states, John, not a study of them. In what universe would you disagree with that assessment?
Oh right, you get your ego in a bunch about the phrase 'mental state'. Not profoundly magical enough for youz.
It's a no-state, because it's a no thing.
Got it.
I heart jargon.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!