Thanks to Russell for calling my attention to the following. I post it here as a companion piece to my last post
http://naturaldogtraining.com/blog/the-trees-in-our-forest/
“Clouds In The Head”
May 21, 2013 in Neuroscience Many brain researchers cannot see the forest for the trees. When they use electrodes to record the activity patterns of individual neurons, the patterns often appear chaotic and difficult to interpret. Ads by Google Brain Training Games – Improve memory and attention with scientific brain games. – www.lumosity.com 2013 Best Skin Tighteners – An Unbiased Review List of The Top Performing Skin Tighteners In 2013 – www.SkinCareSearch.com/FaceLifting “But when you zoom out from looking at individual cells, and observe a large number of neurons instead, their global activity is very informative,” says Mattia Rigotti, a scientist at Columbia University and New York University who is supported by the SNSF and the Janggen-Pöhn-Stiftung. Publishing in Nature together with colleagues from the United States, he has shown that these difficult-to-interpret patterns in particular are especially important for complex brain functions. What goes on in the heads of apes The researchers have focussed their attention on the activity patterns of 237 neurons that had been recorded some years previously using electrodes implanted in the frontal lobes of two rhesus monkeys. At that time, the apes had been taught to recognise images of different objects on a screen. Around one third of the observed neurons demonstrated activity that Rigotti describes as “mixed selectivity”. A mixed selective neuron does not always respond to the same stimulus (the flowers or the sailing boat on the screen) in the same way. Rather, its response differs as it also takes account of the activity of other neurons. The cell adapts its response according to what else is going on in the ape’s brain. Chaotic patterns revealed in context Just as individual computers are networked to create concentrated processing and storage capacity in the field of Cloud Computing, links in the complex cognitive processes that take place in the prefrontal cortex play a key role. The greater the density of the network in the brain, in other words the greater the proportion of mixed selectivity in the activity patterns of the neurons, the better the apes were able to recall the images on the screen, as demonstrated by Rigotti in his analysis. Given that the brain and cognitive capabilities of rhesus monkeys are similar to those of humans, mixed selective neurons should also be important in our own brains. For him this is reason enough why brain research from now on should no longer be satisfied with just the simple activity patterns, but should also consider the apparently chaotic patterns that can only be revealed in context.”
Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-clouds.html#jCp
And then even more on the Forest for the Trees Conundrum:
http://phys.org/news/2013-05-dont-genes-biologists-urge.html
I think NDT is the only manner of analysis other than philosophy where the dangers of “gene-centric” thinking have been pointed out (although let’s not forget the dangers of thought-centric thinking as well). Let me reiterate that the generation of variability between organisms is due to what all organisms have in common, not random variability according to a replication of genes rationale. This is why there is but one operating system, emotion, universal to all animals. We can see whenever any two dogs meet and greet, how they recapitulate this dynamic by which they become different from each other, but not by random, rather in terms of the emotional dynamic, one absorbs emotion, one projects emotion, and then vice versa if the interaction has the opportunity to continue to elaborate. In other words, a gene is not a basic unit of information in the evolution of organisms. The principle of emotional conductivity is the basic unit of information.
