Jun 14, 2021 04:26 PM
(This post was last modified: Jun 15, 2021 05:56 AM by C C.)
David Eagleman: ‘The working of the brain resembles drug dealers in Albuquerque’
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021...lbuquerque
INTRO: David Eagleman, 50, is an American neuroscientist, bestselling author and presenter of the BBC series The Brain, as well as co-founder and chief executive officer of Neosensory, which develops devices for sensory substitution. His area of speciality is brain plasticity, and that is the subject of his new book, Livewired, which examines how experience refashions the brain, and shows that it is a much more adaptable organ than previously thought.
For the past half-century or more the brain has been spoken of in terms of a computer. What are the biggest flaws with that particular model?
It’s a very seductive comparison. But in fact, what we’re looking at is three pounds of material in our skulls that is essentially a very alien kind of material to us. It doesn’t write down memories, the way we think of a computer doing it. And it is capable of figuring out its own culture and identity and making leaps into the unknown. I’m here in Silicon Valley. Everything we talk about is hardware and software. But what’s happening in the brain is what I call livewire, where you have 86bn neurons, each with 10,000 connections, and they are constantly reconfiguring every second of your life. Even by the time you get to the end of this paragraph, you’ll be a slightly different person than you were at the beginning.
In what way does the working of the brain resemble drug dealers in Albuquerque?
It’s that the brain can accomplish remarkable things without any top-down control. If a child has half their brain removed in surgery, the functions of the brain will rewire themselves on to the remaining real estate. And so I use this example of drug dealers to point out that if suddenly in Albuquerque, where I happened to grow up, there was a terrific earthquake, and half the territory was lost, the drug dealers would rearrange themselves to control the remaining territory. It’s because each one has competition with his neighbours and they fight over whatever territory exists, as opposed to a top-down council meeting where the territory is distributed. And that’s really the way to understand the brain. It’s made up of billions of neurons, each of which is competing for its own territory... (MORE)
Does everyone have an inner monologue?
https://www.livescience.com/does-everyon...logue.html
EXCERPT: . . . This long-held assumption that all people rely on an inner voice was first challenged in the late 1990s, in large part by research led by Russell Hurlburt [...] Hurlburt studied participants' inner speech by asking them to wear a beeper. Whenever the device beeped, they had to write down what they were thinking or experiencing in their mind just before the sound. At the end of the day, they met with a researcher to go over their responses.
[...] Eventually, this methodology revealed that some people had inner speech every time the device beeped, almost like "there's a radio in their head," Lœvenbruck said. But others had less inner speech than usual, and some didn't have inner speech at all. They experienced images, sensations and emotions, but not a voice or words.
The lack of an inner monologue has been linked to a condition called aphantasia — sometimes called "blindness of the mind's eye." People who experience aphantasia don't experience visualizations in their mind; they can't mentally picture their bedroom or their mother's face. Many times, those who don't experience visualizations don't experience clear inner speech, either, Lœvenbruck noted. You can participate in Lœvenbruck's research on aphantasia and inner speech via a survey starting this month.
Aphantasia and the lack of an inner voice aren't necessarily bad. But a better understanding of inner speech and the wide array of thought processes people experience could be especially important "for learning methods and education in general," Lœvenbruck said. Up until now, the types of inner speech and experiences children can have, and the resources they may need to learn, have likely been vastly underestimated, she said... (MORE - details)
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021...lbuquerque
INTRO: David Eagleman, 50, is an American neuroscientist, bestselling author and presenter of the BBC series The Brain, as well as co-founder and chief executive officer of Neosensory, which develops devices for sensory substitution. His area of speciality is brain plasticity, and that is the subject of his new book, Livewired, which examines how experience refashions the brain, and shows that it is a much more adaptable organ than previously thought.
For the past half-century or more the brain has been spoken of in terms of a computer. What are the biggest flaws with that particular model?
It’s a very seductive comparison. But in fact, what we’re looking at is three pounds of material in our skulls that is essentially a very alien kind of material to us. It doesn’t write down memories, the way we think of a computer doing it. And it is capable of figuring out its own culture and identity and making leaps into the unknown. I’m here in Silicon Valley. Everything we talk about is hardware and software. But what’s happening in the brain is what I call livewire, where you have 86bn neurons, each with 10,000 connections, and they are constantly reconfiguring every second of your life. Even by the time you get to the end of this paragraph, you’ll be a slightly different person than you were at the beginning.
In what way does the working of the brain resemble drug dealers in Albuquerque?
It’s that the brain can accomplish remarkable things without any top-down control. If a child has half their brain removed in surgery, the functions of the brain will rewire themselves on to the remaining real estate. And so I use this example of drug dealers to point out that if suddenly in Albuquerque, where I happened to grow up, there was a terrific earthquake, and half the territory was lost, the drug dealers would rearrange themselves to control the remaining territory. It’s because each one has competition with his neighbours and they fight over whatever territory exists, as opposed to a top-down council meeting where the territory is distributed. And that’s really the way to understand the brain. It’s made up of billions of neurons, each of which is competing for its own territory... (MORE)
Does everyone have an inner monologue?
https://www.livescience.com/does-everyon...logue.html
EXCERPT: . . . This long-held assumption that all people rely on an inner voice was first challenged in the late 1990s, in large part by research led by Russell Hurlburt [...] Hurlburt studied participants' inner speech by asking them to wear a beeper. Whenever the device beeped, they had to write down what they were thinking or experiencing in their mind just before the sound. At the end of the day, they met with a researcher to go over their responses.
[...] Eventually, this methodology revealed that some people had inner speech every time the device beeped, almost like "there's a radio in their head," Lœvenbruck said. But others had less inner speech than usual, and some didn't have inner speech at all. They experienced images, sensations and emotions, but not a voice or words.
The lack of an inner monologue has been linked to a condition called aphantasia — sometimes called "blindness of the mind's eye." People who experience aphantasia don't experience visualizations in their mind; they can't mentally picture their bedroom or their mother's face. Many times, those who don't experience visualizations don't experience clear inner speech, either, Lœvenbruck noted. You can participate in Lœvenbruck's research on aphantasia and inner speech via a survey starting this month.
Aphantasia and the lack of an inner voice aren't necessarily bad. But a better understanding of inner speech and the wide array of thought processes people experience could be especially important "for learning methods and education in general," Lœvenbruck said. Up until now, the types of inner speech and experiences children can have, and the resources they may need to learn, have likely been vastly underestimated, she said... (MORE - details)