I read some information that each part of our brain represents a different thing, and there is even a common cell for a celebrity like Jennifer Aniston for example...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... -head.html
Jennifer Aniston cell
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IJesusChrist
- Posts: 262
- Joined: Mon Jan 04, 2010 10:42 am
Re: Jennifer Aniston cell
This was slighly debunked - read this too. It's not completely true, but in general, scientists are seeing that a single neuron is associated with a single idea.
To think or not to think.
Re: Jennifer Aniston cell
BTW, these are called "Grandmother Cells"
"A "grandmother cell" is a hypothetical neuron that responds only to a highly complex, specific, and meaningful stimulus, such as the image of one's grandmother. The term originated in a parable Jerry Lettvin told in 1967. A similar concept had been systematically developed a few years earlier by Jerzy Konorski who called such cells "gnostic" units. This essay discusses the origin, influence, and current status of these terms and of the alternative view that complex stimuli are represented by the pattern of firing across ensembles of neurons." - Genealogy of the "grandmother cell". Gross CG. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, New Jersey 08544, USA. cggross@princeton.edu PMID: 12374433 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Note the selective language used by Gross, a grandmother cell is a hypothetical neuron that responds only to a highly complex, specific, and meaningful stimulus..., that they respond to the stimuli is not the same as them housing the representation of the stimuli. You have to understand layered neural networks to understand the significance of grandmother cells. I have my own view on this which also requires a basic understanding of Integrated Information. I don't pretend to understand the mathematics of this and I'm currently embarking on a journey through algebra with the goal of being able to do these calculations and fully understand the mathematics of integrated information. But, conceptually, I disagree with both schools, the grandmother cell is both the final output of the "ensemble" of nerve activity, but only a piece to the puzzle of its conscious content, since the information provided by the grandmother cell is contextually represented with other conscious content.
"A "grandmother cell" is a hypothetical neuron that responds only to a highly complex, specific, and meaningful stimulus, such as the image of one's grandmother. The term originated in a parable Jerry Lettvin told in 1967. A similar concept had been systematically developed a few years earlier by Jerzy Konorski who called such cells "gnostic" units. This essay discusses the origin, influence, and current status of these terms and of the alternative view that complex stimuli are represented by the pattern of firing across ensembles of neurons." - Genealogy of the "grandmother cell". Gross CG. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, New Jersey 08544, USA. cggross@princeton.edu PMID: 12374433 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Note the selective language used by Gross, a grandmother cell is a hypothetical neuron that responds only to a highly complex, specific, and meaningful stimulus..., that they respond to the stimuli is not the same as them housing the representation of the stimuli. You have to understand layered neural networks to understand the significance of grandmother cells. I have my own view on this which also requires a basic understanding of Integrated Information. I don't pretend to understand the mathematics of this and I'm currently embarking on a journey through algebra with the goal of being able to do these calculations and fully understand the mathematics of integrated information. But, conceptually, I disagree with both schools, the grandmother cell is both the final output of the "ensemble" of nerve activity, but only a piece to the puzzle of its conscious content, since the information provided by the grandmother cell is contextually represented with other conscious content.
Re: Jennifer Aniston cell
In my limited understanding of the way the brain works, no overall function is dependant on a single neuron. That's like saying a particular transistor on your computer chip does a calculation.
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Ryan Rudolph
- Posts: 2490
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- Location: British Columbia, Canada
Re: Jennifer Aniston cell
I suspect that a neuron isn't necessarily responsible for one particular stimulus, but one particular range of stimuli. For instance: the area of the cortex thought to be involved in the recognition of faces is called the fusiform face area, and each neuro9n processes facial recognition input in a sort of hierarchy with each lower area communicating two ways up the hierarchy. So a neuron at the top of the hierarchy may fire when information registers from an entire face, but thousands or even millions of neurons may have been needed to bring the entire "face" up the hierarchy to fire one of the higher areas.
So this jennifer Aniston cell could be thought of as a sort of involuntary switch, not the most important cell, a sort of controlled controller. A highly deterministic slave of all lower areas.
So this jennifer Aniston cell could be thought of as a sort of involuntary switch, not the most important cell, a sort of controlled controller. A highly deterministic slave of all lower areas.
Re: Jennifer Aniston cell
I believe you are correct Ryan Rudolph. The cortex is a layered hierarchy, typically of 6 layers, if I remember correctly. The layering is the medium of its over-all representational function. Any particular cell can be removed and replaced by a different cell that can do the job just as well. Its the organizational structure, or one might say the causal/logical structure.
A few ideas of the infinite have influenced my thinking about neuroscience. One that causality doesn't simply work on a temporal dimension, but is also influential on spatial dimensions. The idea that everything is causally determined in the moment by that which is not it. In other words the way we think about there being a conscious landscape that needs to be generated in the brain, a global workspace within which percepts arise. Rather, consciousness is the logical function of highly integrated information. We never experience a thing in itself, its always contrasted and we need to think of neuroscience along the same lines.
I think, its probably not even these grandmother or gnostic cells that are conscious, I'm pretty sure that was ruled out already. Crick and Koch did a lot of work on the neural correlates of conscious experience. Typically cells in cortical regions associated with feature detection and representational structure are not conscious, they are simply the building blocks of conscious perception. Consciousness is more likely to correlate with high-level integrative regions. It is however confusing because we rely on those other regions to be conscious of them. But I also think consciousness is a feature of the universe as a whole, however its quality is determined by its logical structure. In other words, consciousness is the subjectivity inherent in causality. I think if you examine that all consciousness involves the simulation of identity by copying or contrasting from the identity of others, and that causality or logic works in the same fashion. It is a force that has the potential for structures that are conscious like us quite different from the way it is conscious which is not at all by our definition. In this vain, its as if consciousness doesn't begin or end anywhere in the brain, it recedes in representational quality.
This is a difficult view to explain, because it can sound different than what it is. What I mean to do is bridge the gap between objectivity and subjectivity by recognizing that in terms of objectivity we have no option but to submit that consciousness is not objectively observable as a result of it being "logical". But in another way to be logical is to be conscious. Its not about what form it appears in, its always about how a system relates causally. That's really the basis of anything, including consciousness. Physical reality, the brain included, is just a percept of our shared conscious experience. Now this gets into this whole other arena about whether or not creation depends upon conscious experience and I think its fair to say loosely that it does and the perception of their being a big bang might be a figment of conscious experience. Toil as we might in the laboratories and observatories, we would never discover that it was all part of our shadowy cave. I mean, if you think about creation teleonomically, as if existence can only occur within the realm of conscious experience, then experiential causation would also work backward or downward. That is whatever was required to have conscious experience would determine what actually was the case. Big bang explanations are missing the fact that the past is not happening now, it is a good point of information to look into the past, but it doesn't explain how reality works right now and reality only ever works right now. I don't mean that we can decide what we experience, rather I mean that consciousness has certain requirements and we are never going to experience anything outside of that. So I kind of see this as a sea of causation with little eddies that think they are conscious apart from everything else, but they are in some way different in quality. I think that quality is both simply qualitative and logically definable. But its a kind of feedback effect, it would be as if there was a membrane of potential that snaps into possible states as a feature of what is consistent with its own self-realization, if it could realize thats what its motivation was. My only recourse to the problem here is to suggest that this membrane is outside of time-space, as time-space is a function of the membrane, and the membrane is not a membrane, its not anything and its not nothing. Its unrecognizable to conscious experience.
This is a pretty radical way of looking at neuroscience but I've come to think its necessary to look at neuroscience radically. For a long time I've been turned away by quantum explanations, or explanations involving consciousness as fundamental, but this was mostly because I had a distaste for happy-go-lucky nonsense beliefs. But an explanation that has consciousness as fundamental does not necessarily mean a person ought to become high from it. Its not a drug. You are still confined to your own head and always will be as long as you exist. I guess theoretically you could pick up on extremely subtle and grainy information in the receding quality of the conscious mind, but it would hardly be meaningful. Or, it could just be that there is a core system that somehow does it I'm not getting.
A few ideas of the infinite have influenced my thinking about neuroscience. One that causality doesn't simply work on a temporal dimension, but is also influential on spatial dimensions. The idea that everything is causally determined in the moment by that which is not it. In other words the way we think about there being a conscious landscape that needs to be generated in the brain, a global workspace within which percepts arise. Rather, consciousness is the logical function of highly integrated information. We never experience a thing in itself, its always contrasted and we need to think of neuroscience along the same lines.
I think, its probably not even these grandmother or gnostic cells that are conscious, I'm pretty sure that was ruled out already. Crick and Koch did a lot of work on the neural correlates of conscious experience. Typically cells in cortical regions associated with feature detection and representational structure are not conscious, they are simply the building blocks of conscious perception. Consciousness is more likely to correlate with high-level integrative regions. It is however confusing because we rely on those other regions to be conscious of them. But I also think consciousness is a feature of the universe as a whole, however its quality is determined by its logical structure. In other words, consciousness is the subjectivity inherent in causality. I think if you examine that all consciousness involves the simulation of identity by copying or contrasting from the identity of others, and that causality or logic works in the same fashion. It is a force that has the potential for structures that are conscious like us quite different from the way it is conscious which is not at all by our definition. In this vain, its as if consciousness doesn't begin or end anywhere in the brain, it recedes in representational quality.
This is a difficult view to explain, because it can sound different than what it is. What I mean to do is bridge the gap between objectivity and subjectivity by recognizing that in terms of objectivity we have no option but to submit that consciousness is not objectively observable as a result of it being "logical". But in another way to be logical is to be conscious. Its not about what form it appears in, its always about how a system relates causally. That's really the basis of anything, including consciousness. Physical reality, the brain included, is just a percept of our shared conscious experience. Now this gets into this whole other arena about whether or not creation depends upon conscious experience and I think its fair to say loosely that it does and the perception of their being a big bang might be a figment of conscious experience. Toil as we might in the laboratories and observatories, we would never discover that it was all part of our shadowy cave. I mean, if you think about creation teleonomically, as if existence can only occur within the realm of conscious experience, then experiential causation would also work backward or downward. That is whatever was required to have conscious experience would determine what actually was the case. Big bang explanations are missing the fact that the past is not happening now, it is a good point of information to look into the past, but it doesn't explain how reality works right now and reality only ever works right now. I don't mean that we can decide what we experience, rather I mean that consciousness has certain requirements and we are never going to experience anything outside of that. So I kind of see this as a sea of causation with little eddies that think they are conscious apart from everything else, but they are in some way different in quality. I think that quality is both simply qualitative and logically definable. But its a kind of feedback effect, it would be as if there was a membrane of potential that snaps into possible states as a feature of what is consistent with its own self-realization, if it could realize thats what its motivation was. My only recourse to the problem here is to suggest that this membrane is outside of time-space, as time-space is a function of the membrane, and the membrane is not a membrane, its not anything and its not nothing. Its unrecognizable to conscious experience.
This is a pretty radical way of looking at neuroscience but I've come to think its necessary to look at neuroscience radically. For a long time I've been turned away by quantum explanations, or explanations involving consciousness as fundamental, but this was mostly because I had a distaste for happy-go-lucky nonsense beliefs. But an explanation that has consciousness as fundamental does not necessarily mean a person ought to become high from it. Its not a drug. You are still confined to your own head and always will be as long as you exist. I guess theoretically you could pick up on extremely subtle and grainy information in the receding quality of the conscious mind, but it would hardly be meaningful. Or, it could just be that there is a core system that somehow does it I'm not getting.