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David McGavock

How Did Consciousness Evolve? - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...485558

research Consciousness Evolution

shared by David McGavock on 12 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • consciousness, is rarely studied in the context of evolution.
  • What is the adaptive value of consciousness? When did it evolve and what animals have it?
  • Attention Schema Theory (AST),
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • suggests that consciousness arises as a solution to one of the most fundamental problems facing any nervous system: Too much information constantly flows in to be fully processed. The brain evolved increasingly sophisticated mechanisms for deeply processing a few select signals at the expense of others,
  • The next evolutionary advance was a centralized controller for attention that could coordinate among all senses. In many animals, that central controller is a brain area called the tectum
  • It coordinates something called overt attention
  • The tectum is a beautiful piece of engineering. To control the head and the eyes efficiently, it constructs something called an internal model, a feature well known to engineers. An internal model is a simulation that keeps track of whatever is being controlled and allows for predictions and planning.
  • With the evolution of reptiles around 350 to 300 million years ago, a new brain structure began to emerge – the wulst
  • our version is usually called the cerebral cortex and has expanded enormously
  • The cortex is like an upgraded tectum
  • The most important difference between the cortex and the tectum may be the kind of attention they control
  • tectum is the master of overt attention—pointing the sensory apparatus toward anything important
  • cortex ups the ante with something called covert attention
  • Your cortex can shift covert attention from the text in front of you to a nearby person, to the sounds in your backyard, to a thought or a memory. Covert attention is the virtual movement of deep processing from one item to another.
  • the cortex must model something much more abstract.
  • it does so by constructing an attention schema
  • a constantly updated set of information that describes what covert attention is doing moment-by-moment and what its consequences are
  • The attention schema is therefore strategically vague. It depicts covert attention in a physically incoherent way, as a non-physical essence. And this, according to the theory, is the origin of consciousness. We say we have consciousness because deep in the brain, something quite primitive is computing that semi-magical self-description.
  • In the AST, the attention schema first evolved as a model of one’s own covert attention. But once the basic mechanism was in place, according to the theory, it was further adapted to model the attentional states of others, to allow for social prediction
  • theory of mind, the ability to understand the possible contents of someone else’s mind.
  • Language is perhaps the most recent big leap in the evolution of consciousness. Nobody knows when human language first evolved. Certainly we had it by 70 thousand years ago when people began to disperse around the world, since all dispersed groups have a sophisticated language.
  • Maybe partly because of language and culture, humans have a hair-trigger tendency to attribute consciousness to everything around us.
  • Justin Barrett called it the Hyperactive Agency Detection Device, or HADD
  • David McGavock on 12 Jun 16
     
    The Attention Schema Theory (AST), developed over the past five years, may be able to answer those questions. The theory suggests that consciousness arises as a solution to one of the most fundamental problems facing any nervous system: Too much information constantly flows in to be fully processed. The brain evolved increasingly sophisticated mechanisms for deeply processing a few select signals at the expense of others, and in the AST, consciousness is the ultimate result of that evolutionary sequence. If the theory is right-and that has yet to be determined-then consciousness evolved gradually over the past half billion years and is present in a range of vertebrate species.
Tero Toivanen

Discovery of quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons corroborates contr... - 0 views

www.kurzweilai.net/ar-old-theory-of-consciousness

quantum brain theory consciousness research neuroscience neurons

shared by Tero Toivanen on 17 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • A review and update of a controversial 20-year-old theory of consciousness published in  Elsevier’s Physics of Life Reviews (open access) claims that consciousness derives from deeper-level, finer-scale activities inside brain neurons. The recent discovery of quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons corroborates this theory, according to review authors Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose.
Tero Toivanen

Your Brain Scan Looks Different on Mac and PC - 2 views

gizmodo.com/...-looks-different-on-mac-and-pc

brain research neuroscience software Mac PC

shared by Tero Toivanen on 19 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 19 Jun 12
     
    "Science and medicine are supposedly based on rigor-a rigor where theories are only correct if you can replicate results. It turns out, though, that the software used to analyze medical images of your brain gives wildly different answers if it's run on Mac or PC."
David McGavock

Scientific Understanding of Consciousness - 0 views

willcov.com/bio-consciousness

understanding consciousness experts writers summary

shared by David McGavock on 02 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • During the past 20 years or so, biological sciences have advanced to the point that scientists have begun researching biological mechanisms of brain function and suggesting some reasonably well-founded hypotheses for consciousness. Leading the way in these pioneering efforts, in my judgment, have been:   Gerald Edelman with his hypothesis of the Dynamic Core, Antonio Damasio with his concepts of  Protoself, Core Self, Autobiographical Self, Core Consciousness and Extended Consciousness, Joseph LeDoux and his emphasis on the intricacies of synapses and the emotional brain,
  • Rudolfo Llinás and his researches into ~40 Hz oscillations and synchronization, György Buzsáki with his discussion and exploration of neural mechanisms related to oscillation and synchronization in the neocortex and hippocampus for perception and memory, Joaquín Fuster, the world’s preeminent expert on the frontal lobes, and his concept of the "perception-action cycle," Susan Greenfield's notion of "neuronal gestalts" as a way of conceptualizing a highly variable aggregation of neurons that is temporarily recruited around a triggering epicenter. I use the neuronal gestalts idea in my way of visualizing the functionality of the dynamic core of the thalamocortical system, Eric Kandel who has explored short-term and long-term memory,
  • The late Francis Crick with his collaborator Christof Koch who have pursued the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC), Michael Gazzaniga with the concept of the left hemisphere ‘interpreter’ unifying consciousness experience, Edmund Rolls and Gustavo Deco with their mathematical models of brain function using information theory approaches for biologically plausible neurodynamical modeling of cognitive phenomena corroborated by brain imaging studies, David LaBerge with his discussion of the thalamocortical circuit and attention, Alan Baddeley who continues to refine his model for working memory, Philosopher John Searle who endorses the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of neural networks.
  • David McGavock on 02 Mar 14
     
    "My objective in this website has been to bring together salient features of these assorted interpretations by science experts into a synthesis of my own understanding of consciousness. I consider these statements and interpretations to be a framework on which to build a fuller understanding as further data, concepts and insights develop from ongoing research."
Tero Toivanen

Naps, Learning and REM : The Frontal Cortex - 0 views

scienceblogs.com/...naps_learning_and_rem.php

brain learning REM productivity memory

shared by Tero Toivanen on 03 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Taking a nap without REM sleep also led to slightly better results. But a nap that included REM sleep resulted in nearly a 40 percent improvement over the pre-nap performance.
  • The study, published June 8 in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that those who had REM sleep took longer naps than those who napped without REM, but there was no correlation between total sleep time and improved performance. Only REM sleep helped.
  • Numerous studies have now demonstrated that REM sleep is an essential part of the learning process. Before you can know something, you have to dream about it.
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  • The breakthrough came in 1972, when psychologist Jonathan Winson came up with a simple theory: The rabbit brain exhibited the same pattern of activity when it was scared and when it was dreaming because it was dreaming about being scared. The theta rhythm of sleep was just the sound of the mind processing information, sorting through the day's experiences and looking for any new knowledge that might be important for future survival. They were learning while dreaming, solving problems in their sleep.
  • Wilson began his experiment by training rats to run through mazes. While a rat was running through one of these labyrinths, Wilson measured clusters of neurons in the hippocampus with multiple electrodes surgically implanted in its brain. As he'd hypothesized, Wilson found that each maze produced its own pattern of neural firing. To figure out how dreams relate to experience, Wilson recorded input from these same electrodes while the rats were sleeping. The results were astonishing. Of the 45 rat dreams recorded by Wilson, 20 contained an exact replica of the maze they had run earlier that day. The REM sleep was recapitulating experience, allowing the animals to consolidate memory and learn new things. Wilson's lab has since extended these results, demonstrating that "temporally structured replay" occurs in both the hippocampus and visual cortex.
  • Tero Toivanen on 03 Jul 09
     
    Taking a nap without REM sleep also led to slightly better results. But a nap that included REM sleep resulted in nearly a 40 percent improvement over the pre-nap performance
Tero Toivanen

Jeff Hawkins on how brain science will change computing | Video on TED.com - 0 views

www.ted.com/...nce_will_change_computing.html

brain science theory computing TED memory

shared by Tero Toivanen on 24 May 09 - Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 24 May 09
     
    Treo creator Jeff Hawkins urges us to take a new look at the brain -- to see it not as a fast processor, but as a memory system that stores and plays back experiences to help us predict, intelligently, what will happen next.
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