This page describes the organizational forces that limit change.
It explains how to overcome
them when necessary.
This page uses an example to illustrate how:
- A business can gain focus from targeting key customers,
- Business planning activities performed by the whole organization can build awareness, empowerment and coherence.
- A program approach can ensure strategic alignment.
This page uses the example of HP's printer organization freeing
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The constraints are described.
The techniques to overcome them are implied.
The constraints are described.
The techniques to overcome them are implied.
Conscious access
Summary
Consciousness has confounded philosophers and scientists for centuries. Now it is finally being characterized scientifically. That required a transformation of approach.Realizing that consciousness was ill-defined neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene and others characterized and focused on conscious access is, argues Stanislas Dehaene, when some attended information eventually enters our awareness and becomes reportable to others. .
In the book he outlines the limitations of previous psychological dogma. Instead his use of subjective assessments opened the window to contrast totally unconscious brain activity with those including consciousness.
He describes the research methods. He explains the contribution of new sensors and probes that allowed the psychological findings to be correlated, and causally related to specific neural activity.
He describes the theory of the brain he uses, the 'global neuronal workspace' to position all the experimental details into a whole.
He reviews how both theory and practice support diagnosis and treatment of real world mental illnesses.
The implications of Dehaene's findings for subsequent consciousness research are outlined.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the brain's development is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete.
and operation introduce constraints which are discussed.
Consciousness and the Brain
In Stanislas Dehaene's book 'Consciousness and the Brain' he describes a transformation in our ability to study consciousness scientifically. Following Descartes he notes any science of consciousness must be able to resolve two issues:- Our capacity to report thoughts using speech.
- Our flexible reasoning. Descartes could not see how
this could be performed by any automaton. Consequently
he developed Cartesian
dualism is an assumed separation of the mind and body. It has a long history. Descartes's Cartesian dualism assumes the mind and body are two clocks in synchrony but otherwise unrelated. John Locke commented 'It is impossible to conceive that matter, either with or without motion, could have, originally, in and from itself, sense, perception, and knowledge; as is evident from hence, that then sense, perception, and knowledge, must be a property eternally separable from matter and every particle of it.' Chalmers describes this explanatory gap as the hard problem of consciousness. Damasio explains that the construction of feelings requires there be no duality, and he shows how it then emerged due to the structure of affect in humans.
attributing the flexible reasoning to the soul is an ancient concept that was eternal according to Plato. In his cave analogy he promotes the ideal and the sensory which highlights the dualism of soul and body. The soul was eternal - being simple, pure and generated by the creator. Bodies were associated with souls by gods at birth. Epicurus argued that souls were constructed from atoms, were complex and died. CAS theory likens:
- 'souls' to schematic strings, and 'bodies' to organisms, and
- 'souls' to the mind's well known entities: amygdala, insula etc, and the 'bodies' to the percepts & representations that the well known entities become conscious hubs for; which agrees in part with both positions.
- 'souls' to schematic strings, and 'bodies' to organisms, and
Consciousness enters the lab
He explains how:- A change of definition - setting aside the over-loaded suitcase word have multiple attached meanings which encourage us to think in different ways about the word. Suitcase words are reviewed by Marvin Minsky.
consciousness Dehaene focused on vigilance is the state of wakefulness, which varies when we fall asleep or wake up. For Goleman & Davidson it also reflects maintaining a constant level of attention as time goes on, through controlling habituation. Their vigilance includes alerting - being ready to respond to whatever is encountered.
, attention is the mutli-faceted capability allowing access to consciousness. It includes selective attention, vigilance, allocating attention, goal focus, and meta-awareness.
and conscious access is, argues Stanislas Dehaene, when some attended information eventually enters our awareness and becomes reportable to others. .
- A reevaluation of subjective assessments - Dehaene
realized that these assessments were legitimate as
experimental data about the subjective experience. The
experimenter could then search for brain correlates of the
subjective report.
- Introduction of fMRI is functional magnetic resonance imaging. Seiji Ogawa leveraged the coupling of neuronal circuit activity and blood flow through the associated glial cells to build a 3 dimensional picture of brain cell activity. As haemoglobin gives up its oxygen to support the neural activity it becomes magnetic and acts as a signal detected by the fMRI. fMRI easily visualizes the state of activity in the living human brain at millimeter resolution, up to several times a second but it cannot track the time course of neural firing so it is augmented with EEG.
supported by EEG is electroencephalography, the recording of brain waves. With 256 electrodes it provides high-quality digital recordings of brain activity with millisecond resolution over the whole head. It tracks the time course of neural firing. It complements fMRI. MEG is considered analogous but even better. The awake brain emits a variety of frequencies classified in EEGs as alpha (8-13 hertz), beta (13 - 30 Hz), gamma (30 and higher) and theta (5 cycles a second). Visual stimuli result in enhanced gamma-band activity within 200 milliseconds. For consciously perceived stimuli it remained sustained while it died out over time for unseen masked stimuli. Theta band is used by the cortex for long distance messaging. and MEG is magnetoencephalograthy the very precise recording of the miniscule magnetic waves that accompany the discharge of currents in cortical neurons.
, and
- Elegant psychology experiments - use various processes to
manipulate consciousness including: distracting attention, binocular rivalry is a visual illusion caused by presenting each eye with a different image. Consciously we perceive alternately one of the images and then the other. It was first discovered by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1838. Logothetis & Schall found some neurons respond to the physical image. Other neurons respond to the representation of it, which requires memory. Logothetis & Schall subsequently found the number of neurons attuned to representations increases further up the visual processing chain.
, attentional blinks is an experimental technique to create a minimal contrast between conscious and unconscious processing. A brief period of invisibility of an image is created by saturating the conscious mind with attention on letters within a stream of symbols which are mostly digits. A first letter is perceived. A second letter presented in close succession (100 milliseconds) is completely missed by conscious perception. The delay can be adjusted until 50% of the time the second letter is perceived allowing sensors to look at the differences in brain activity between the two minimally different situations. The blink is associated with an increase in pleasure inducing neural signals. Goleman & Davidson note that, after a three month vipassana meditation retreat, the blink time reduces 20% due to the neural response being more subdued.
, local-global test detects conscious access. It consists of presenting repeatedly, many times, an identical sequence of five sounds. When the last sound differs from the first four, unconscous auditory areas react with a 'mismatch response'. Consciously the brain quickly adapts to the repeating melody. After adaptation, it is the absence of the final novelty that triggers a response to novelty. This higher-order response seems to exist only in conscious patients and is associated with Dehaene's signatures of consciousness. ; have revealed key details about the operation of consciousness.
Crick's leverage of psychological forces
The strategy is based on Francis Crick and Christian Koch's observation that visual illusions provide scientists with the means to track the fate of conscious versus unconscious stimuli in the brain. Even though the data is subjective the results are reproducible. There are lots of sensory items being processed by the unconscious. Conscious access is, argues Stanislas Dehaene, when some attended information eventually enters our awareness and becomes reportable to others. makes the currently salient, Douglas Hofstadter controlled the amount of attention a Workspace object in Copycat would receive from codelets via its salience. The more descriptions, analogous to geons, an object has and the more highly activated the nodes involved therin, the more important the object is. Modulating this tendency is any relative lack of connections from the object to the rest of the objects in the Workspace. Salience is a dynamic number that takes into account both these factors. In Smiley the instantaneous salience of a Workspace's objects is calculated by itsalience. aggregate object is a collection of: happenings, occurrences and processes; including emergent entities, as required by relativity, explains Rovelli. But natural selection has improved our fitness by representing this perception, in our minds, as an unchanging thing, as explained by Pinker. Dehaene explains the object modeling and construction process within the unconscious and conscious brain.available to awareness. Attention is an unconscious filter that uses the brain's current goals to select the most salient, Douglas Hofstadter controlled the amount of attention a Workspace object in Copycat would receive from codelets via its salience. The more descriptions, analogous to geons, an object has and the more highly activated the nodes involved therin, the more important the object is. Modulating this tendency is any relative lack of connections from the object to the rest of the objects in the Workspace. Salience is a dynamic number that takes into account both these factors. In Smiley the instantaneous salience of a Workspace's objects is calculated by itsalience. unconscious aggregate object. Attention depends on the brain being vigilant.
Dehaene notes that with many unconscious processors and the brain dividing up processing over
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
time
self knowledge is no longer mysterious. A 'strange loop'
can be setup allowing a self-object defined by associations of
unconscious processors access to consciousness. Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational. It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations evolve together with events, not things
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one of the variables of the gravitational field. With our scale we don't register quantum fluctuations, making space-time appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive differences in time of different clocks, so we experience a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is helpful to our decisions
There are many experimental manipulations which create Bernard Baars's minimal contrasts between unconscious and conscious states. The attentional blink is an experimental technique to create a minimal contrast between conscious and unconscious processing. A brief period of invisibility of an image is created by saturating the conscious mind with attention on letters within a stream of symbols which are mostly digits. A first letter is perceived. A second letter presented in close succession (100 milliseconds) is completely missed by conscious perception. The delay can be adjusted until 50% of the time the second letter is perceived allowing sensors to look at the differences in brain activity between the two minimally different situations. The blink is associated with an increase in pleasure inducing neural signals. Goleman & Davidson note that, after a three month vipassana meditation retreat, the blink time reduces 20% due to the neural response being more subdued.
leverages attention's refractory period to mask a second image. By adjusting the time that attention focuses on the first item the second can be perceived 50% of the time. This situation has no difference in the unconscious processing of perceived and masked items. Any differences must relate to the operation of consciousness.
Fathoming unconscious depths
Dehaene explains that virtually all the brain's regions are observed experimentally to participate in both conscious and unconscious thought. This is contrary to earlier philosophical and psychological proposals that separated the brain into conscious and unconscious processing regions.Subliminal priming flashes a subliminal word or picture, the prime, immediately before another visible item, the target. Experiments demonstrate that the presence of the subliminal prime speeds up conscious processing when the prime is represented consciously within a second of the initial showing.
speeds up the processing of the signal seen consciously. The prime can be abstractly related to the conscious signal - say red and RED indicating that the brain performs abstract associations unconsciously. Chess masters who have over learned chess positions can be primed by a single glance at a realistic piece payout. Unconscious processes operate in massive parallelism. Processing of dangerous signals by the amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral. It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust from the insula cortex, allowing it to orchestrate emotion. It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision making circuitry of the frontal lobes. It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors. During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning. It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required. Its central nucleus projects to the BNST. It signals the locus ceruleus. It directly signals area 25. The amygdala:
- Promotes aggression. Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage. It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.
- Participates in disgust
- Perceives fear promoting stimuli. In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months. Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments).
- Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids. Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more.
- Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety. It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations. The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment. The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color. The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion. The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon.
- Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure.
- Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens. The amygdala turns off during orgasm.
- Uses but is not directly involved in vision.
Blindsight is a condition induced by lesions in the primary visual cortex. It deprives sufferers of their concious vision and they behave as though blind. But they respond unconsciously to the objects that are no longer processed by consciousness.
and spatial neglect is a characteristic of a form of right hemisphere brain damage, typically in the area of the inferior parietal lobe, which prevents the sufferer from attending consciously to the left side of space. While their conscious judgements and reports are significantly impaired these patients are not truely blind in the left visual field. Their retinas and early visual cortex are perfectly functional.
are other forms of experimentally demonstrable subliminal priming. They allowed researchers to show that information about the size, location and shape of objects is a collection of: happenings, occurrences and processes; including emergent entities, as required by relativity, explains Rovelli. But natural selection has improved our fitness by representing this perception, in our minds, as an unchanging thing, as explained by Pinker. Dehaene explains the object modeling and construction process within the unconscious and conscious brain.
was proceeding unconsciously through the occipital of the cerebral cortex includes the primary visual cortex area V1. It performs early stages of visual analysis supporting recognition of shapes, colors and objects. and parietal lobes of the cerebral cortex is at the back of the brain divided into two. It associates sensory signals of various modalities with:
- Details about the location of the body: supramarginal gyrus; and
- Models interpreting touch, visual signals, language and mathematics.
The Mcgurk effect is an illusion, described by Harry McGurk and John MacDonald, where a video shows a person speaking, and saying 'da da da da'. But on closing your eyes you hear what is being said as 'ba ba ba'. The illusion is generated by setting up conflicting signals: The mouth is moving to say 'ga'; while the sound is 'ba'. the brain resolves the conflict into a single intermediate percept 'da'. The illusion demonstrates how late in the processing chain and reconstructed our conscious experience is. Imaging indicates the illusion is constructud in the frontal lobes and or superior temporal sulcus and is then sent back to the early sensory regions.
demonstrates that multi-modal signal integration is performed unconsciously. Imaging indicates the effect occurs in the frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex is at the front of the brain. It includes the: prefrontal cortex, motor cortex. Sapolsky asserts it makes you do the harder thing when it's the right thing to do. The frontal cortex supports working memory to sustain focus on a task. It also coordinates the strategic actions necessary to achieve success. It provides impulse control, regulation of emotion, and willpower. The prefrontal cortex maintains focus by deprioritizing currently irrelevant streams of information. The frontal cortex tracks rules. Over a lifetime, that builds into a costly activity. Once it tires, responses become less prosocial. But practice shifts operation of tasks to the cerebellum. The frontal cortex signals the tegmentum and accumbens with the conclusions of its expectancy/discrepancy calculations. The frontal lobe provides executive function, considering bits of information, assessing patterns and then prioritizing the strategies. The frontal lobe is the most recent part of the brain to evolve and involves a disproportionate percentage of primate-unique genes in its development and operation. It does not complete development until the mid-20s. It includes spindle neurons. It is easily damaged. Sapolsky (Nauta) notes that its ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a quasi-member of the limbic system.
and is then sent back to the early sensory regions. It requires overlearning dedicates neurons to unconsciously recognizing a frequently experienced object. This automatic binding into dedicated brain circuits operates differently to the processing of a new sentence, which requires consciousness. . Modeling occurs continuously with many interpretations built in parallel which attention is the mutli-faceted capability allowing access to consciousness. It includes selective attention, vigilance, allocating attention, goal focus, and meta-awareness.
samples. Once attention focuses elsewhere sampling stops. The binding of new words into a sentence uses a different consciousness dependent process.
What is Consciousness Good For?
Dehaene argues consciousness presents an instantaneous selection of the current best fit of the salient, Douglas Hofstadter controlled the amount of attention a Workspace object in Copycat would receive from codelets via its salience. The more descriptions, analogous to geons, an object has and the more highly activated the nodes involved therin, the more important the object is. Modulating this tendency is any relative lack of connections from the object to the rest of the objects in the Workspace. Salience is a dynamic number that takes into account both these factors. In Smiley the instantaneous salience of a Workspace's objects is calculated by itsalience. unconscious models. He notes the brain's unconscious circuits appear ideally organized for developing statistically accurate inferences from sensory inputs. The massive parallel modeling of sensory signals must use Bayesian statistics is an iterative form of statistics invented by Thomas Bayes. It uses a 'prior' statistic to represent the prior situation and then performs a calculation that integrates the probability of new events occurring into a 'posterior' probability. This posterior becomes the prior for the next iteration with the application of the Bayesian identity xpost = xprior*y/(xprior*y + z(1-xprior)). The magic in Bayesian statistics is in accurately generating the prior xprior and the current event probabilities y and z. R. A. Fischer was so skeptical of the legitimacy of the prior that he advocated an alternative statistical framework and experimental process. to infer the most likely models from the ambiguous low level inputs. Consciousness slowly samples from the alternatives and over Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
time can support global
feedback. Area MT is the middle temporal motion area MT (V5) located in the occipital lobe. It contains many neurons detecting motion. Each neuron suffers from aperture problems but consciousness resolves the ambiguity with a most likely current Bayesian sampling. The resolution takes time. Neuronal recordings show the inference may take a tenth of a second. In the meantime MT neurons see only local motion. Subsequently they encode the global direction. Subjective consciousness sees only the end result. The global resolution requires consciousness vanishing under anesthesia. Consciousness enables the iterative exchange of modeling results resulting in eventual agreement. Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational. It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations evolve together with events, not things
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one of the variables of the gravitational field. With our scale we don't register quantum fluctuations, making space-time appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive differences in time of different clocks, so we experience a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is helpful to our decisions
neurons, for example, suffer from aperture problems is the ambiguity introduced by sampling through a narrow peephole. It is impossible to resolve direction of motion of a item sampled through the peephole for example.
, but with conscious support the models are slowly improved and resolve to an inferred global best fit.
When the inputs are made ambiguous the unconscious reports (primes) the alternatives with likelihoods and the conscious brain presents each alternative for a duration corresponding to the alternative's likelihood.
Dehaene notes that consciousness condenses the sensory signals, removing gaps and ambiguities. He argues the output is 'compact enough' to be useful to working memory is a dominant function of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the areas it connects with. Prefrontal neurons implement an active memory continuing to fire after the signal is gone for potentially dozens of seconds from the inferior temporal cortex (multi-sensory integration area) and lower level sensory neurons characterized by Hubel & Weisel, while the short-term memory task continues. If the prefrontal cortex gets distracted the memory is lost from consciousness. Earl Miller argues the prefrontal cortex implements the rules that decide which working memory neurons will fire (Spring 2017). Working memory develops from childhood through the late teens, and depends on pyramidal neurons within the PFC.
. Lesions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is
- The front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. It evolved most recently. During adolescence when the PFC is still deploying, older brain agents provide equivalent strategies: ventral striatum. The PFC has been implicated in planning, working memory: dorsolateral; decision making: Orbitofrontal cortex; and social behavior. It regulates feelings. Different PFC circuits track internal reward driven strategies and externally signalled advice. The PFC chooses between conflicting options, letting go or restraint, especially between cognition and emotions. It imposes an overarching strategy for managing working memory. It is essential for thinking about multiple items with different labels. It includes neurons that are interested in particular sub-categories: Dog, Cat. Once it has made a decision it signals the rest of the frontal lobe just behind it. Glucocorticoids decrease excitability of the PFC.
, abulia is an incapacity to generate voluntary actions.
, akinetic mutism is an inability to generate spontaneous verbal reports. Repetition is often still possible. , anosognosia is unawareness of a major deficit, including paralysis.
, autonoetic memory is the ability to recall and analyse one's own thoughts.
impairment; result in planning deficiencies.
Consciousness and learning over time
Dehaene argues that consciousness enables learning over Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
time. Memory trace conditioning is an experimental procedure where there is an empty gap between the deliveries of a classical conditioning signal, a tone which precedes a puff of air streamed at a rabbit's eye. The procedure requires conscious access unlike the alternative delayed conditioning procedure. Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational. It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations evolve together with events, not things
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one of the variables of the gravitational field. With our scale we don't register quantum fluctuations, making space-time appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive differences in time of different clocks, so we experience a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is helpful to our decisions
experiments require the hippocampus is a part of the medial temporal lobe of the brain involved in the temporary storage or coding of long-term episodic memory. It includes the dentate gyrus. Memory formation in the cells of the hippocampus uses the MAP kinase signalling network which is impacted by sleep deprivation. The hippocampus dependent memory system is directly affected by cholinergic changes throughout the wake-sleep cycle. Increased acetylcholine during REM sleep promotes information attained during wakefulness to be stored in the hippocampus by suppressing previous excitatory connections while facilitating encoding without interference from previously stored information. During slow-wave sleep low levels of acetylcholine cause the release of the suppression and allow for spontaneous recovery of hippocampal neurons resulting in memory consolidation. It was initially associated with memory formation by McGill University's Dr. Brenda Milner, via studies of 'HM' Henry Molaison, whose medial temporal lobes had been surgically destroyed leaving him unable to create new explicit memories. The size of neurons' dendritic trees expands and contracts over a female rat's ovulatory cycle, with the peak in size and cognitive skills at the estrogen high point. Adult neurogenesis occurs in the hippocampus (3% of neurons are replaced each month) where the new neurons integrate into preexisting circuits. It is enhanced by learning, exercise, estrogen, antidepressants, environmental enrichment, and brain injury and inhibited by various stressors explains Sapolsky. Prolonged stress makes the hippocampus atrophy. He notes the new neurons are essential for integrating new information into preexisting schemas -- learning that two things you thought were the same are actually different. Specific cells within the hippocampus and its gateway, the entorhinal cortex, are compromised by Alzheimer's disease. It directly signals area 25.
and prefrontal cortex. Dehaene writes the unconscious operations generate decaying exponential signals. Consciousness maintains its signals.
Experiments suggest two-step operations require conscious support. He sees consciousness as analogous to a Turing machine, a machine specified by mathematician Alan Turing which is the blueprint for the electronic programmable computer. It consists of an infinite tape on which symbols can be written. A movable read/write tape head which can move about the tape and write on or read symbols from the tape. A set of rules that tell the head what to do next.
. It applies strategies in series. Intermediate results are persisted in working memory and slowly dispatched to an army of unconscious production rules. Dehaene concludes we can't reason strategically on an unconscious hunch. It must obtain conscious access is, argues Stanislas Dehaene, when some attended information eventually enters our awareness and becomes reportable to others. .
A social sharing device
Consciousness is needed to communicate to others through speech. Dehaene argues the compacted stream generated by consciousness helps make communication via speech viable. It's a multisensory, viewer invariant durable synthesis that other minds will find useful. Dehaene notes that a categorical answer accompanied by a valuation of confidence is particularly useful for building collective decisions. The brain uses the frontal pole and midline of the ventromedial (vmPFC) is:- Focused on the impact of emotion on decision making
- A participant in limbic system operations
- Many human behaviors involve interactions between the vmPFC, the limbic system & the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Part of decision making is for the limbic system to internally simulate (often with the help of the sympathetic nervous system) what alternative outcomes of a decision will feel like with the results of these somatic marker analyses being reported to the vmPFC.
- Damage to the vmPFC results in bad decision making: Poor judgement in choosing friends & partners, Failure to respond to negative feedback; because they can't feel the issues; and are overly controlled by the logical contribution of the DLPFC.
- The front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. It evolved most recently. During adolescence when the PFC is still deploying, older brain agents provide equivalent strategies: ventral striatum. The PFC has been implicated in planning, working memory: dorsolateral; decision making: Orbitofrontal cortex; and social behavior. It regulates feelings. Different PFC circuits track internal reward driven strategies and externally signalled advice. The PFC chooses between conflicting options, letting go or restraint, especially between cognition and emotions. It imposes an overarching strategy for managing working memory. It is essential for thinking about multiple items with different labels. It includes neurons that are interested in particular sub-categories: Dog, Cat. Once it has made a decision it signals the rest of the frontal lobe just behind it. Glucocorticoids decrease excitability of the PFC.
of the temporal of the cerebral cortex is involved in associating sensory input with comprehending language (TEO), storing new memories in the medial area (hippocampus), visual memory, emotion and deriving meaning. The temporal lobe is located bellow the parietal lobe, and between the frontal lobe and occipital lobe.
and parietal lobes of the cerebral cortex is at the back of the brain divided into two. It associates sensory signals of various modalities with:
- Details about the location of the body: supramarginal gyrus; and
- Models interpreting touch, visual signals, language and mathematics.
He notes the frontal pole and venteromedial prefrontal cortex encode our knowledge of our self and others. Dehaene argues that our 'self' is just a database that gets filled in through our social experiences, in the same format which we use to understand others.
Dehaene concludes a key evolutionary step was to open the workspace to others.
The signatures of conscious thought
Four signatures of conscious access have been identified:- Sudden ignition of the parietal of the cerebral cortex is at the back of the brain divided into two. It associates sensory signals of various modalities with:
- Details about the location of the body: supramarginal gyrus; and
- Models interpreting touch, visual signals, language and mathematics.
- The front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. It evolved most recently. During adolescence when the PFC is still deploying, older brain agents provide equivalent strategies: ventral striatum. The PFC has been implicated in planning, working memory: dorsolateral; decision making: Orbitofrontal cortex; and social behavior. It regulates feelings. Different PFC circuits track internal reward driven strategies and externally signalled advice. The PFC chooses between conflicting options, letting go or restraint, especially between cognition and emotions. It imposes an overarching strategy for managing working memory. It is essential for thinking about multiple items with different labels. It includes neurons that are interested in particular sub-categories: Dog, Cat. Once it has made a decision it signals the rest of the frontal lobe just behind it. Glucocorticoids decrease excitability of the PFC.
and EEG is electroencephalography, the recording of brain waves. With 256 electrodes it provides high-quality digital recordings of brain activity with millisecond resolution over the whole head. It tracks the time course of neural firing. It complements fMRI. MEG is considered analogous but even better. The awake brain emits a variety of frequencies classified in EEGs as alpha (8-13 hertz), beta (13 - 30 Hz), gamma (30 and higher) and theta (5 cycles a second). Visual stimuli result in enhanced gamma-band activity within 200 milliseconds. For consciously perceived stimuli it remained sustained while it died out over time for unseen masked stimuli. Theta band is used by the cortex for long distance messaging. of attentional blink is an experimental technique to create a minimal contrast between conscious and unconscious processing. A brief period of invisibility of an image is created by saturating the conscious mind with attention on letters within a stream of symbols which are mostly digits. A first letter is perceived. A second letter presented in close succession (100 milliseconds) is completely missed by conscious perception. The delay can be adjusted until 50% of the time the second letter is perceived allowing sensors to look at the differences in brain activity between the two minimally different situations. The blink is associated with an increase in pleasure inducing neural signals. Goleman & Davidson note that, after a three month vipassana meditation retreat, the blink time reduces 20% due to the neural response being more subdued.
situations record a series of waves: P1 at 100 ms then N1 at 170 ms, each progressing through the hierarchy of visual areas. But a subsequent
- Details about the location of the body: supramarginal gyrus; and
- P3 is the third large positive neural wave in the processing chain of perception in the brain after stimulus is presented. It is specifically associated with conscious access, breaking through the barrier around the frontal and parietal networks. It starts around 270 milliseconds and peaks between 300 and 500 milliseconds. It appears to exclude further P3 waves limiting attention of further stimuli the longer it persists. It reflects the brain's global ignition.
wave only occurred for perceived instances. And it was the presence of a P3 wave for the initial stream of letters that stopped the development of a second P3 wave creating the attentional blink. The signature shows that consciousness always lags behind the environment and attention is the mutli-faceted capability allowing access to consciousness. It includes selective attention, vigilance, allocating attention, goal focus, and meta-awareness.
increases the delay. To cope we have unconscious mechanisms: - Autopilots respond to low level sensory stimuli.
- Anticipation compensates for the sluggishness of our consciousness. Almost all sensory and motor areas contain temporal learning mechanisms that anticipate external events. ,
- Error
perception in the human brain is a two stage process: appraisal followed by ignition. Initially, during the first one-fifth of a second, the cortex reacts virtually identically to conscious and unconscious errors. An autopilot system in the cingulate gyrus notices that the motor plan does not unfold according to instructions and fires vigorously to signal the error--even when it remains unconscious. This initial brain response is fully unconscious. If the error becomes perceived consciously it correlates with a late strong positive wave (Pe) detectable on the top of the scalp which is virtually indistinguishable from P3 wave of conscious access.
;
- A late and sudden burst of high-frequency oscillations
Dehaene terms global
ignition is when the large pyramidal neurons in the upper layers of the cortex broadcast their excitation to a large audience of receiving neurons. Dehaene argues it occurs when broadcast excitation exceeds a threshold and becomes self-reinforcing. The brain is exhibiting a phase change. The neurons that are strongly connected burst into self-sustained state of high level activity. . Even when the signal was only to one
side of the visual
system supports processing of visual data into what and how. To do this it has two distinct paths: The ventral path and the dorsal path.
the global ignition reached into both hemispheres. Epilepsy treatment requires deployment of electrodes deep within the patient's brain. These additional sensors indicated that gamma rhythms are observed as 40 Hz neural activity waves associated with conscious access.
are amplified and persist for perceived signals but collapse for unconscious ones. - Synchronization of information exchanges across distant brain regions. Dehaene argues synchronization (as illustrated by Granger causality analysis is a method invented by Clive Grainger to determine when two time series are related so that one may "cause" the other. ) facilitates the transmission of information because neurons across the whole brain will be ready at the same time to accept signals, back and forth across the network, from one another.
. They are causal:
- They map to the high level consistent stable modelled
representations, such as cells in the posterior
cingulate is a brain region where invariant-location cells dwell. It is closely connected to the parahippocampal gyrus.
and the place cells are neurons which fire whenever a higher animal occupies a certain location in space. Place cells are highly invariant over a variety of sensory cues, and they even maintain their space-selective firing as the animal wanders around in full darkness. They encode where the animal thinks it is. And the same cells associate a time stamp with the memories.
of the parahippicampal gyrus is a rich club hub next to the hippocampus and is where place cells reside.
for example which model where an animal thinks it is. Not the shifting sense data, processed by the primary visual cortex is the visual gateway into the cortex. for example, from which they are built. "I detect Bill Clinton's model" neurons have been found experimentally which correlate with the signatures! And by use of TMS is transcranial magnetic stimulation uses a set of accumulators to suddenly deliver a strong electric current to a coil placed on top of the head. An induced magnetic field discharges at a target place in the cortex. Virtually any region of the cortex can be stimulated with precise timing.
experimenters showed
- These brain operations cause the conscious
perceptions. Researchers modified the high level
signals via TMS is transcranial magnetic stimulation uses a set of accumulators to suddenly deliver a strong electric current to a coil placed on top of the head. An induced magnetic field discharges at a target place in the cortex. Virtually any region of the cortex can be stimulated with precise timing.
and the subjects reported changes in what they perceived. Disrupting global ignition affected consciousness but left the unconscious flows intact. Disrupting local closed loops impacted unconscious and conscious processing.
- Consciousness requires the 'synchronization' flows.
Stimulation of a high level area, MT/V5 is visual cortex area 5 also called area MT. , generates a
perception but additional stimulation of the primary visual
cortex inhibits the perception by getting in the way of the
synchronization flows building the percept.
and brain-computer interfaces use custom silicon chips with thousands of electrodes can be implanted in the cortex of experimental animals to increase the bandwidth of connections between the brains and researchers' computers. will support further advances in understanding of how brain operations generate perceptions.
Dehaene's global neuronal workspace
Dehaene has built upon prior theories of consciousness to develop his 'global neuronal workspace'. He views this as a global information broadcasting, amplifying and flexible routing system within the cortex includes the paleocortex a thin sheet of cells that mostly process smell, archicortex and the neocortex. The cerebral cortex is a pair of large folded sheets of brain tissue, one on either side of the top of the head connected by the corpus callosum. It includes the occipital, parietal, temporal and frontal lobes.. It arises from a neural network tasked with massive sharing throughout the brain.
Dehaene argues the architecture explains how ideas become incorporated into future plans. The global neuronal workspace is implemented by a special set of neurons - giant pyramidal cells are critical to the function of working memory. They also support global ignition. Well-functioning pyramidal cells will have extensive dendritic spine outgrowth. Kandel explains that these spines begin to form in the third trimester of pregnancy and they and the number of synapses on them expand rapidly for the first few years of life. Starting at puberty, synaptic pruning removes dendritic spines that are not being used. The pruning is most active during adolescence.
with long axons, a long extension of a neuron which has a membrane constructed to support the uni-directional flow of action potential from the dendritic tree and cell body to the synaptic terminals. and immense dendrites with specialized spines - that criss-cross the cortex into an integrated whole. He notes it provides an internal space for thought experiments detached from the external world. Information can be passed flexibly to other mental processes within the brain. And using language it can be reported to others.
He argues the global neuronal workspace thus removes the need for Cartesian dualism is an assumed separation of the mind and body. It has a long history. Descartes's Cartesian dualism assumes the mind and body are two clocks in synchrony but otherwise unrelated. John Locke commented 'It is impossible to conceive that matter, either with or without motion, could have, originally, in and from itself, sense, perception, and knowledge; as is evident from hence, that then sense, perception, and knowledge, must be a property eternally separable from matter and every particle of it.' Chalmers describes this explanatory gap as the hard problem of consciousness. Damasio explains that the construction of feelings requires there be no duality, and he shows how it then emerged due to the structure of affect in humans.
.
The ultimate test of consciousness science
Dehaene relates how the research program has changed our understanding of coma and related medical problems. Locked-in syndrome describes a person who is conscious but because of brain stem damage became unable to control his body. Only the eyes remain integrated with the brain.
was impossible to diagnose until recently. That left sufferers waiting for months totally isolated until a loved one is an emotion, which generates a feeling of pleasure at a genetic relative's well-being and pain in their harm. An inseminated human female is genetically a full relative of her partner since she carries his germ-line gametes. From any of their pooled gene's perspective the offspring have a one-in-two chance of including the specific gene. Hence love supports kin selection driven by the selfish actions of genes. Emotions, including love and anger, help drive the interactions between people. Compassionate love also supports the symbiotic partnership of true friends built on fairness and trust. Sapolsky notes the opposite of love is indifference, not hate. The amygdala's projection into the locus ceruleus drives autonomic intensity.
highlighted the life are emotions that are induced in response to other people's signals, are implemented by specific brain regions including: Prefrontal cortex, Insula cortex, Anterior cingulate cortex, Amygdala; receive lots of projections from interoceptive networks. Sapolsky asserts in the moments just before we prioritize a consequential act the process is less rational and autonomous than we assume. There are many significant signals from the prior seconds to minutes that effect social emotions:
- Our brains respond subliminally to skin color very quickly: Amygdala activates, Fusiform face area activates; prior to the conscious stream activating the anterior cingulate and DLPFC which then inhibit the amygdala.
- Social dominance is culture independent and accurately subliminally assessed after a 40-millisecond exposure. Stable status relations activate the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and DLPFC, while a dynamic situation also activates the amygdala.
- People who are subliminally judged attractive by the medial orbitofrontal cortex are considered kinder, smarter and more honest. They are given more breaks.
- Faces and eyes in particular are most important subliminal cues. They are monitored by the fusiform. People respond more appropriately under the subliminal influence of eyes.
- Olfactory sensors send more direct projections to the limbic network than other sensory networks. Pheromones signal fear activating the amygdala.
- Observing pain responses in others results in empathy even among young children.
- Words are important emotional signals providing unconscious priming of social responses. Kahneman & Tversky demonstrated how the phrase '95% survival rate' is found to be a more acceptable choice than '5% death rate'. Sapolsky notes that prosocial word priming fosters cooperation with antisocial word priming doing the opposite.
- Cultural objects such as visible: flags, team badges; subliminally modify in-group outgroup decisions.
- The presence of women in a situation alters the responses of men: Increased risk-taking, more focus on luxuries, increased aggression; in circumstances where conflict is already encouraged but not when status is achieved prosocially.
- Physical environment shapes behavior as demonstrated by Philip Zimbardo and leveraged in broken windows policing.
- Bodily adjustments to sensory structures introduce adaptive complexity, with the brain being influenced to become more sensitive and alter the sensor networks to make some more sensitive. But these adaptations also vary culturally. Collectivist cultures focus on a visual scene's surrounding contextual information while people from individualistic cultures focus on the focal object!
- Its face area being more activated by faces with in-group skin color.
- It activating when shown pictures of cars in automobile aficionados.
- It activating when shown pictures of birds in birdwatchers; since it really recognizes examples of items from an individual's emotionally salient categories.
and EEG is electroencephalography, the recording of brain waves. With 256 electrodes it provides high-quality digital recordings of brain activity with millisecond resolution over the whole head. It tracks the time course of neural firing. It complements fMRI. MEG is considered analogous but even better. The awake brain emits a variety of frequencies classified in EEGs as alpha (8-13 hertz), beta (13 - 30 Hz), gamma (30 and higher) and theta (5 cycles a second). Visual stimuli result in enhanced gamma-band activity within 200 milliseconds. For consciously perceived stimuli it remained sustained while it died out over time for unseen masked stimuli. Theta band is used by the cortex for long distance messaging. ; used with tests such as local-global detects conscious access. It consists of presenting repeatedly, many times, an identical sequence of five sounds. When the last sound differs from the first four, unconscous auditory areas react with a 'mismatch response'. Consciously the brain quickly adapts to the repeating melody. After adaptation, it is the absence of the final novelty that triggers a response to novelty. This higher-order response seems to exist only in conscious patients and is associated with Dehaene's signatures of consciousness. can detect conscious signatures.
The program has also provided an improved understanding of coma. The frontal cortex of the cerebral cortex is at the front of the brain. It includes the: prefrontal cortex, motor cortex. Sapolsky asserts it makes you do the harder thing when it's the right thing to do. The frontal cortex supports working memory to sustain focus on a task. It also coordinates the strategic actions necessary to achieve success. It provides impulse control, regulation of emotion, and willpower. The prefrontal cortex maintains focus by deprioritizing currently irrelevant streams of information. The frontal cortex tracks rules. Over a lifetime, that builds into a costly activity. Once it tires, responses become less prosocial. But practice shifts operation of tasks to the cerebellum. The frontal cortex signals the tegmentum and accumbens with the conclusions of its expectancy/discrepancy calculations. The frontal lobe provides executive function, considering bits of information, assessing patterns and then prioritizing the strategies. The frontal lobe is the most recent part of the brain to evolve and involves a disproportionate percentage of primate-unique genes in its development and operation. It does not complete development until the mid-20s. It includes spindle neurons. It is easily damaged. Sapolsky (Nauta) notes that its ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a quasi-member of the limbic system.
, striatum (basal ganglia) is a brain region, including the nucleus accumbens, which is important in learning motor habits, including addictions. To do this the ventral striatum assigns values to winning.
, pallidum has two parts: the dorsal globus pallidus and the ventral pallidum involved in the planning and inhibition of movements.
and thalamus has all the main inputs to the cortex passing through it. It is massively supplied with return innervations from the cortical regions it routes too. It does not stand on the route of the main exits from the cortex. The parafascicular nucleus of the rat thalamus contains relatively high levels of D5 dopamine receptors. For human vision the primary system connects to the neocortex via, a small part of the thalamus, the LGN. operate in a closed loop that allows the brain state to move between sleep facilitates salient memory formation and removal of non-salient memories. The five different stages of the nightly sleep cycles support different aspects of memory formation. The sleep stages follow Pre-sleep and include: Stage one characterized by light sleep and lasting 10 minutes, Stage two where theta waves and sleep spindles occur, Stage three and Stage four together represent deep slow-wave sleep (SWS) with delta waves, Stage five is REM sleep; sleep cycles last between 90-110 minutes each and as the night progresses SWS times reduce and REM times increase. Sleep includes the operation of synapse synthesis and maintenance through DNA based activity including membrane trafficking, synaptic vesicle recycling, myelin structural protein formation and cholesterol and protein synthesis. Sleep also controls inflammation (Jan 2019) Sleep deprivation undermines the thalamus & nucleus accumbens management of pain.
, vigilance is the state of wakefulness, which varies when we fall asleep or wake up. For Goleman & Davidson it also reflects maintaining a constant level of attention as time goes on, through controlling habituation. Their vigilance includes alerting - being ready to respond to whatever is encountered.
and consciousness. The neurons, specialized eukaryotic cells include channels which control flows of sodium and potassium ions across the massively extended cell membrane supporting an electro-chemical wave which is then converted into an outgoing chemical signal transmission from synapses which target nearby neuron or muscle cell receptors. Neurons are supported by glial cells. Neurons include a:
- Receptive element - dendrites
- Transmitting element - axon and synaptic terminals. The axon may be myelinated, focusing the signals through synaptic transmission, or unmyelinated - where crosstalk is leveraged.
- Highly variable DNA schema using transposons.
Dehaene notes that medical innovation is the economic realization of invention and combinatorial exaptation. While highly innovative, monopolies: AT&T, IBM; usually have limited economic reach, constraining productivity. This explains the use of regulation, or even its threat, that can check their power and drive the creations across the economy.
must still occur to allow general hospital doctors to detect consciousness diagnostically.
Dehaene's future of consciousness
Dehaene uses the techniques and theoretical architecture he has described to resolve a variety of questions about consciousness:- When do babies become conscious? - While they cannot speak
babies respond to Dehaene's research protocols. They
respond to the auditory local-global test detects conscious access. It consists of presenting repeatedly, many times, an identical sequence of five sounds. When the last sound differs from the first four, unconscous auditory areas react with a 'mismatch response'. Consciously the brain quickly adapts to the repeating melody. After adaptation, it is the absence of the final novelty that triggers a response to novelty. This higher-order response seems to exist only in conscious patients and is associated with Dehaene's signatures of consciousness.
and their whole
cortex includes the paleocortex a thin sheet of cells that mostly process smell, archicortex and the neocortex. The cerebral cortex is a pair of large folded sheets of brain tissue, one on either side of the top of the head connected by the corpus callosum. It includes the occipital, parietal, temporal and frontal lobes.
responds actively to language. And they demonstrate global ignition is when the large pyramidal neurons in the upper layers of the cortex broadcast their excitation to a large audience of receiving neurons. Dehaene argues it occurs when broadcast excitation exceeds a threshold and becomes self-reinforcing. The brain is exhibiting a phase change. The neurons that are strongly connected burst into self-sustained state of high level activity. during the perceived 50% of visually masked faces (analog of the attentional blink is an experimental technique to create a minimal contrast between conscious and unconscious processing. A brief period of invisibility of an image is created by saturating the conscious mind with attention on letters within a stream of symbols which are mostly digits. A first letter is perceived. A second letter presented in close succession (100 milliseconds) is completely missed by conscious perception. The delay can be adjusted until 50% of the time the second letter is perceived allowing sensors to look at the differences in brain activity between the two minimally different situations. The blink is associated with an increase in pleasure inducing neural signals. Goleman & Davidson note that, after a three month vipassana meditation retreat, the blink time reduces 20% due to the neural response being more subdued.
). They appear to have conscious access is, argues Stanislas Dehaene, when some attended information eventually enters our awareness and becomes reportable to others. but everything operates two to three times slower than in adults as would be expected since many of their neurons, specialized eukaryotic cells include channels which control flows of sodium and potassium ions across the massively extended cell membrane supporting an electro-chemical wave which is then converted into an outgoing chemical signal transmission from synapses which target nearby neuron or muscle cell receptors. Neurons are supported by glial cells. Neurons include a:- Receptive element - dendrites
- Transmitting element - axon and synaptic terminals. The axon may be myelinated, focusing the signals through synaptic transmission, or unmyelinated - where crosstalk is leveraged.
- Highly variable DNA schema using transposons.
yet.
- Receptive element - dendrites
- Conscious animals? - Monkeys can't talk but they can be
trained to signal 'did' or 'did not' with a keyboard and so
report binocular
rivalry is a visual illusion caused by presenting each eye with a different image. Consciously we perceive alternately one of the images and then the other. It was first discovered by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1838. Logothetis & Schall found some neurons respond to the physical image. Other neurons respond to the representation of it, which requires memory. Logothetis & Schall subsequently found the number of neurons attuned to representations increases further up the visual processing chain.
, local-global detects conscious access. It consists of presenting repeatedly, many times, an identical sequence of five sounds. When the last sound differs from the first four, unconscous auditory areas react with a 'mismatch response'. Consciously the brain quickly adapts to the repeating melody. After adaptation, it is the absence of the final novelty that triggers a response to novelty. This higher-order response seems to exist only in conscious patients and is associated with Dehaene's signatures of consciousness. detection, masking and with appropriate lesions of the primary visual cortex is the visual gateway into the cortex. show blindsight is a condition induced by lesions in the primary visual cortex. It deprives sufferers of their concious vision and they behave as though blind. But they respond unconsciously to the objects that are no longer processed by consciousness.
. Dehaene notes that Macaques generalize the did or did not signal from a sensory test to a memory in the brain includes functionally different types: Declarative, or explicit, (episodic and semantic), Implicit, Procedural, Spatial, Temporal, Verbal; Hebb suggested that glutamate receptive neurons learn by (NMDA channel based) synaptic strengthening: short term memory. This was shown to happen for explicit memory formation in the hippocampus. This strengthening is sustained by subsequent LTP. The non-real-time learning and planning processes operate through consciousness using the working memory structures, and then via sleep, the salient ones are consolidated while the rest are destroyed and garbage collected. test illustrating that they have enough self-consciousness to ponder the prior memory for several seconds with the parietal of the cerebral cortex is at the back of the brain divided into two. It associates sensory signals of various modalities with:
- Details about the location of the body: supramarginal gyrus; and
- Models interpreting touch, visual signals, language and mathematics.
- The front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. It evolved most recently. During adolescence when the PFC is still deploying, older brain agents provide equivalent strategies: ventral striatum. The PFC has been implicated in planning, working memory: dorsolateral; decision making: Orbitofrontal cortex; and social behavior. It regulates feelings. Different PFC circuits track internal reward driven strategies and externally signalled advice. The PFC chooses between conflicting options, letting go or restraint, especially between cognition and emotions. It imposes an overarching strategy for managing working memory. It is essential for thinking about multiple items with different labels. It includes neurons that are interested in particular sub-categories: Dog, Cat. Once it has made a decision it signals the rest of the frontal lobe just behind it. Glucocorticoids decrease excitability of the PFC.
- Details about the location of the body: supramarginal gyrus; and
- Diseases of consciousness? - Dehaene notes that key
features of schizophrenia is a chronic, psychotic, brain disorder impacting thinking and decision making that affects 1.1 percent of the adult U.S. population. It is characterized by hallucinations, delusions: paranoid, feel they are being sent special messages, feel have special powers; disorganized and unusual thinking, social withdrawal, lack of motivation and cognitive decline: executive functions & working memory; that begins with the first episode and continues throughout life. Children who eventually struggle with schizophrenia have normal working memory at age seven but are found with impairments by age 13. MRIs show that people with schizophrenia have lateral ventricles that are enlarged, a thinner cerebral cortex and smaller hippocampus. The default mode network is disrupted. It seems to be caused by over pruning of prefrontal cortex pyramidal neurons (Jan 2016), hippocampal pyramidal cells and sometimes thalamus neuron dendrites. A dopaminergic network is impacted: mesolimbic; suggesting too much dopamine signalling. Columbia University psychiatrist Franz Kallman found that a person with schizophrenia is much more likely, than non sufferers, to have a parent or sibling with the disorder. And identical twins are even more likely to share the disorder. Many of the genes associated with schizophrenia act on the developing fetal brain. MHC C4 gene supports immunity and synaptic pruning where it tags the synapses to be pruned. Variant C4-A is associated with schizophrenia where too many synapses are tagged. DISC1 translocation mutations have greatly increased the risk of schizophrenia. DISC1 supports the migration of neurons during development. There is evidence that some cases occur because of particular CNVs in the DNA of the sufferers: ZNF804A. Autism and schizophrenia risk increases with one particular chromosome 7 CNV. And de Novo mutations increase the risk. Treatments include: psychotherapy, chlorpromazine which blocks dopamine receptors of the mesolimbic pathway removing 'positive' characteristics of schizophrenia but it also impacts the nigrostriatal pathway target receptors inducing Parkinson's disease like symptoms;
can be explained via damage to the long distance network that provides global synchronization for unconscious modelling.
- Conscious machines? -
Dehaene views his global neuronal
workspace and many special-purpose programs operating
in parallel with inputs from within the system as a good
foundation for a conscious computer. He sees current
computers as lacking: flexible communications, plasticity in computer programs is the ability to learn as they operate according to Dehaene. and autonomy is decision making based on careful weighting of the pros and cons before committing to a course of action according to Dehaene. . He
sees no logical reason why computers can't reflect the
architecture of our brains. He adds "it is the brain's
dynamics which embed its present inputs into a tapestry of
past memories and future goals, adding a layer of personal
experience to raw sensory inputs."
CAS constraints on consciousness
Complex adaptive system This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory is positioned relative to the natural
sciences. It catalogs the laws and strategies which
underpin the operation of systems that are based on the
interaction of emergent agents.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory discussed at the site are presented.
(CAS) theory
applies directly to both the architecture and operation of the
brain and the scientific approach Dehaene describes. John Holland's framework for representing complexity is outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory discussed at the site are presented.
Dehaene notes how Francis Crick and Cristian Koch highlighted the opportunity to use psychological factors to overcome the powerful
This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
phenotypic
alignment constraints
on researching consciousness. Crick and Koch were This page looks at how scenarios allow people to relate to the
possible evolution of the business and its products and
services. The Long view process is highlighted.
Value based customer segmentation is reviewed. Keirsey's psychological categorization and 'crossing the chasm' are highlighted.
Three alternate systems are framed as long view scenarios (1) development of a billing mediation business, (2) development of the Grameen Bank the first micro loan bank and (3) some classic chess games.
Some of the scenarios will be referenced in the SWOT and planning pages of this frame. In particular the complex adaptive system (CAS) goals used will be referenced by the planning pages schemetic goals.
deeply involved in the research program,
advancing Value based customer segmentation is reviewed. Keirsey's psychological categorization and 'crossing the chasm' are highlighted.
Three alternate systems are framed as long view scenarios (1) development of a billing mediation business, (2) development of the Grameen Bank the first micro loan bank and (3) some classic chess games.
Some of the scenarios will be referenced in the SWOT and planning pages of this frame. In particular the complex adaptive system (CAS) goals used will be referenced by the planning pages schemetic goals.
To benefit from shifts in the environment agents must be flexible. Being
sensitive to environmental signals
agents who adjust strategic priorities can constrain their
competitors.
flexibly from the Strategy gives way to tactics. If you your company or
other emergent system collapse
there is no further possibility of strategic action. This
page discusses the importance of sustaining the base of
operations to support subsequent strategic action.
firm base of biochemistry, molecular
biology and the psychology of seeing, towards the This page discusses the benefits of bringing agents and resources to the
dynamically best connected region of a complex adaptive system (CAS).
central battleground. Dehaene
and others were able to leverage the opened
lines. The revealing experimental approach described by Dehaene characterizes conscious access is, argues Stanislas Dehaene, when some attended information eventually enters our awareness and becomes reportable to others. . Dehaene associates the P3 is the third large positive neural wave in the processing chain of perception in the brain after stimulus is presented. It is specifically associated with conscious access, breaking through the barrier around the frontal and parietal networks. It starts around 270 milliseconds and peaks between 300 and 500 milliseconds. It appears to exclude further P3 waves limiting attention of further stimuli the longer it persists. It reflects the brain's global ignition.
wave as a signpost of conscious access is, argues Stanislas Dehaene, when some attended information eventually enters our awareness and becomes reportable to others. .
This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
Emergent This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
evolution
constrains our forebears to be coherent and competitive.
Some mechanism was facilitating the global coordination and
planning needed to operate and compete however rudimentary the
mechanism was. Dehaene shows that access to the neocortex is the main part of the cerebral cortex in mammals. It was originally thought to exist only in mammals but is also present in reptiles and birds buried behind other areas of the for-brain. The for-brain develops based on a genetic plan consistent across all vertebrates. The neocortex processes vision in the visual hierarchy V1, V2, V3 .. V5 ... V20; and language with areas including Wernicke's and Broca's with sensors in the inner ear. Primate species with bigger social groups have larger cortices. Human cortex size suggests traditional human cultures had an average size of 150 people. is important for awareness in his experimental scenarios. We wonder do emotional signals such as fear is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful. The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger. There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central amydala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala.
inducing pictures of snakes, or sexually charged material also enter consciousness through the same route. Do the fast routes to the older superior colliculi are a pair of structures at the top of the brain stem that contribute to the visual system. They are called the optic tecta in lower vertebrates. In mammals and especially primates much of this visual processing operates in the neocortex. The superior colliculi in mammals still support eye movement, including involuntary eye movements. Neurons in the superior colluculus code the location of auditory stimuli in eye-centered reference frame. have an impact? If not why don't they?
We assume the encoding of memetic
Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schemata
in the brain will strategically resemble other schematic
representations. Schematic attributes will allow Plans change in complex adaptive systems (CAS) due to the action of genetic
operations such as mutation, splitting and recombination.
The nature of the operations is described.
genetic operations to proceed. Neuronal, specialized eukaryotic cells include channels which control flows of sodium and potassium ions across the massively extended cell membrane supporting an electro-chemical wave which is then converted into an outgoing chemical signal transmission from synapses which target nearby neuron or muscle cell receptors. Neurons are supported by glial cells. Neurons include a: - Receptive element - dendrites
- Transmitting element - axon and synaptic terminals. The axon may be myelinated, focusing the signals through synaptic transmission, or unmyelinated - where crosstalk is leveraged.
- Highly variable DNA schema using transposons.
The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Samuel
modeling is described as an approach.
model and Agents use sensors to detect events in their environment.
This page reviews how these events become signals associated
with beneficial responses in a complex adaptive system (CAS). CAS signals emerge from
the Darwinian information model. Signals can indicate decision summaries and level of
uncertainty.
signal generation. The long term
representations may be prion is a protein with the unusual property of having two highly stable configurations. DNA generally encodes only one of the stable configurations of the prion. The other form once present converts the rest of the local prion to its configuration which is very stable. The generation of prions and their configuration shifts are used by neurons to represent long term state. based.
A minor point of confusion arises from a difference between our view (functionalist following Fodor) and Dehaenes regarding phenomena. Dehaene appears to be a reductionist who views epiphenomena as correlates that do not truly represent experimental variables.
This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
Emergence
Russ Abbott explores the impact on science of epiphenomena and
the emergence of agents.
suggests that all high level
variables are epiphenomena
modeling underlying phenomena in aggregate. As Dehaene makes clear neuronal models can be quite abstract. CAS development is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete.
constraints additionally require that only very low level epiphenomena can be directly genetically encoded. Most other aspects must be modelled based on associations between these epiphenomena based building blocks and internal positional structures, connections and local signals. Further the neurons must use local positional signalling, and glial tracks support neurons: Creating the initial structural tracks along which the neurons travel, Insulating them by deploying the myelin sheath - an activity which is influenced by sleep, Storing energy for them and removing debris from damage to neurons. Robert Sapolsky notes Glial cells outnumber neurons ten to one. They include various subtypes. They greatly influence how neurons speak to one another, and also form glial networks that communicate completely differently from neurons.
to define how they differentiate during development is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete.
. Once in position they can represent associations based on neuronal transmissions in local models. As such evolution can over
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
time associate critical high level object is a collection of: happenings, occurrences and processes; including emergent entities, as required by relativity, explains Rovelli. But natural selection has improved our fitness by representing this perception, in our minds, as an unchanging thing, as explained by Pinker. Dehaene explains the object modeling and construction process within the unconscious and conscious brain. Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational. It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations evolve together with events, not things
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one of the variables of the gravitational field. With our scale we don't register quantum fluctuations, making space-time appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive differences in time of different clocks, so we experience a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is helpful to our decisions
multi-modal experiences with particular structural addresses.
Network wide state representations in CAS are often necessary. The second messenger, provide an amplified form of signals within a cell. Since cells need to stabilize their overall state with many operations happening in parallel second messengers are useful in clarifying the signals effect. The second messenger strategy is seen repeatedly in CAS including: neuro-transmitter guidance signals such as dopamine distribution in the brain, corporate positioning email messages in response to new situations, newspaper articles aligning the population; can be seen to provide this facility at the level of cellular agents (enzymes, a protein with a structure which allows it to operate as a chemical catalyst and a control switch.
). Dehaene's mechanism of brain wide state coherence seems analogous. Indeed it does not seem dissimilar to the method used by UK ministers to coherently represent the aggregate views of their various constituencies.
Learning must involve gathering of signals from the environment that can be later used as flags. But which inputs from the environment are worth recording? Dehaene shows consciousness involved with associating relevance with the stream of signals that are reviewed during sleep. Most are abandoned but the loudest get represented in longer term memory in the brain includes functionally different types: Declarative, or explicit, (episodic and semantic), Implicit, Procedural, Spatial, Temporal, Verbal; Hebb suggested that glutamate receptive neurons learn by (NMDA channel based) synaptic strengthening: short term memory. This was shown to happen for explicit memory formation in the hippocampus. This strengthening is sustained by subsequent LTP. The non-real-time learning and planning processes operate through consciousness using the working memory structures, and then via sleep, the salient ones are consolidated while the rest are destroyed and garbage collected. agents.
Dehaene argues the self is a database of representations built from our social experiences. CAS
The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Samuel
modeling is described as an approach.
learning models suggest that the
self must be used to bootstrap the process. Subsequently This page discusses the interdependence of perception and
representation in a complex adaptive system (CAS). Hofstadter
and Mitchell's research with Copycat is
reviewed. The bridging of a node from a network of 'well
known' percepts to a new representational instance is discussed
as it occurs in biochemistry, in consciousness and
abstractly.
perception and representation must go
hand in hand. In our understanding of Dehaene's global neuronal workspace it seems inconsistent with the neuron, specialized eukaryotic cells include channels which control flows of sodium and potassium ions across the massively extended cell membrane supporting an electro-chemical wave which is then converted into an outgoing chemical signal transmission from synapses which target nearby neuron or muscle cell receptors. Neurons are supported by glial cells. Neurons include a:
- Receptive element - dendrites
- Transmitting element - axon and synaptic terminals. The axon may be myelinated, focusing the signals through synaptic transmission, or unmyelinated - where crosstalk is leveraged.
- Highly variable DNA schema using transposons.
This page discusses the effect of the network on the agents participating in a complex
adaptive system (CAS). Small
world and scale free networks are considered.
networks we see setup during the
brain's development
and the subsequent operational formation and destruction of
neurons and connections. In both Dehaene and our
architectures Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The examples include a computer program where modeling and actions are performed by software agents. These software agents are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some implications of this are outlined.
agents use It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The examples include a computer program where modeling and actions are performed by software agents. These software agents are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some implications of this are outlined.
The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Samuel
modeling is described as an approach.
models to describe their The complex adaptive system (CAS)
nature of a value delivery system is first introduced. It's a network
of agents acting as relays.
The critical nature of hub agents and the difficulty of altering an aligned network is reviewed.
The nature of and exceptional opportunities created by platforms are discussed.
Finally an example of aligning a VDS is presented.
environment. But we think a Von Neumann, John was a brilliant Hungarian mathematician who published the earliest paper specifying architecture for digital computing. It ensured this computing architecture was not patentable. The architecture has a central processing unit (CPU), random access storage addressable by the CPU and a sequencer. The architecture encourages a serial software architecture that matches the logic of the sequencer and processing operations on program and data. Von Neumann, his history, computing architecture and some alternative architectures are reviewed by Melanie Mitchell. The critical nature of hub agents and the difficulty of altering an aligned network is reviewed.
The nature of and exceptional opportunities created by platforms are discussed.
Finally an example of aligning a VDS is presented.
computer architecture he uses as the processing analog where routing is necessary to move data between storage and the processing units is not appropriate. Dehaene's addition of plasticity in computer programs is the ability to learn as they operate according to Dehaene. and autonomy is decision making based on careful weighting of the pros and cons before committing to a course of action according to Dehaene. highlights the issue. Emergent systems have to solve these problems close to the point of emergence. Hence the architecture must have a fundamental ability to
The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Samuel
modeling is described as an approach.
model and
learn (based on the Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schematic plan)
and to action the plan and its changes (the Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The examples include a computer program where modeling and actions are performed by software agents. These software agents are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some implications of this are outlined.
agent architecture). It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The examples include a computer program where modeling and actions are performed by software agents. These software agents are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some implications of this are outlined.
This presentation applies complex adaptive system (CAS) agents to computer
programming.
Smiley, and we assume the brain's
associative networks must be based on: - Broad access of agents directly or indirectly to sensory
signals or the associative models of these signals along
with
- Positional awareness of agents based on This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS). The mechanism and its emergence are discussed.evolutionary feedback (through
Plans change in complex adaptive systems (CAS) due to the action of genetic operations such as mutation, splitting and recombination. The nature of the operations is described.changes to the
Plans emerge in complex adaptive systems (CAS) to provide the instructions that agents use to perform actions. The component architecture and structure of the plans is reviewed.plan and use of the plan to
Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system (CAS).act), setup during development and
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The examples include a computer program where modeling and actions are performed by software agents. These software agents are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some implications of this are outlined.
- Flows of different kinds are essential to the operation of complex adaptive systems (CAS).Flow
Example flows are outlined. Constraints on flows support the emergence of the systems. Examples of constraints are discussed.
This page discusses the effect of the network on the agents participating in a complex adaptive system (CAS). Small world and scale free networks are considered.network
Terrence Deacon explores how constraints on dynamic flows can induce emergent phenomena which can do real work. He shows how these phenomena are sustained. The mechanism enables the development of Darwinian competition.constraints based on state driven signaling.
This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence
underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS). Physical forces and
constraints follow the rules of complexity. They generate
phenomena and support the indirect emergence of epiphenomena.
Flows of epiphenomena interact in events which support the
emergence of equilibrium and autonomous
entities. Autonomous entities enable evolution
to operate broadening the adjacent possible.
Key research is reviewed.
emerge associatively from the
modelling agents' outputs driven by the current distributed
'state' of the neural network of agents and the diverse
multi-modal sensory signals. Speed will force competing
systems to introduce Representing state in emergent entities is essential but
difficult. Various structures are used to enhance the rate
and scope of state transitions. Examples are
discussed.
structurally
enhanced state. It is possible that a Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
schematic structure will be identified
that allows representation of Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
memes
and enables [epi] Plans change in complex adaptive systems (CAS) due to the action of genetic
operations such as mutation, splitting and recombination.
The nature of the operations is described.
genetic operations
to be performed. Otherwise evolution must work through the
cell's genetic structures alone. 'Consciousness and the Brain' reveals key aspects of what we are. It is packed with insightful details to justify Dehaene's conclusions. Descartes would be impressed!
.
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This page looks at schematic structures
and their uses. It discusses a number of examples:
As a working example it presents part of the contents and schematic details from the Adaptive Web Framework (AWF)'s operational plan.
Finally it includes a section presenting our formal representation of schematic goals.
Each goal has a series of associated complex adaptive system (CAS) strategy strings.
These goals plus strings are detailed for various chess and business examples.
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- Modular components are combined into strategies for use in business plans and business models.
As a working example it presents part of the contents and schematic details from the Adaptive Web Framework (AWF)'s operational plan.
Finally it includes a section presenting our formal representation of schematic goals.
Each goal has a series of associated complex adaptive system (CAS) strategy strings.
These goals plus strings are detailed for various chess and business examples.
This page uses an example to illustrate how:
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