Re: The brain is like a surface - a hypersurface - a maximum hypersurface.

Mindpixel wrote:
> I learned from John McCrone in 2003 of a scene that took place in the
> early 90s between the theoretical neurobiologist, Karl Friston and
> Harvard Psychologist, Stephen Kosslyn as they stood by a pond at London
> Zoo.
>
> "Look," said Friston, "Traditional thinking holds that the brain is
> some kind of computer, crunching its way through billions of inputs
> each second to output a state of consciousness. But really, the brain
> acts more as if the arrival of imput provokes a widespread disturbance
> in some already existing state."
>
> Friston nodded down at the pond, "That gives you a better way of
> thinking about it. The brain is like a surface, its circuts drawn tight
> in a certain state of tension. You toss in a pebble - that´s your
> sensory input - and you immediately get ripples of activity. Sure the
> patterns say something about the way the pebble hit the surface, but
> they are mixed with the lingering patterns of earlier pebbles of input.
> And then everything begins echoing off the sides of the pond. The
> overall shape of the system has an effect on the patterns you see.
> Nothing is being calculated. The response of the system evolves
> organically. Or to use the proper term, dynamically."
>
> "And as we throw more pebbles - or rather - experiences - into this
> particular pond, we change its shape, and thus the kinds of patterns it
> tends to produce. This is a system that learns," agreed Kosslyn. "It
> has a memory!"
>
> To discover that top brain scientists were thinking geometrically gave
> me a very nice feeling. Yes, they could see how the metaphor of a
> surface and of shape were far closer to the realty of the brain than a
> computer. I knew I was going to have a much easier time convincing the
> world to take seriously the idea that evolution maximized hypersurface
> and that the mind and brain are unified in shape in seven dimensions,
> than I had expected.
>

Would very-large-scale neural nets be a good model of this?

.

Relevant Pages

  • The brain is like a surface - a hypersurface - a maximum hypersurface.
    ... Stephen Kosslyn as they stood by a pond at London ... "Look," said Friston, "Traditional thinking holds that the brain is ... they are mixed with the lingering patterns of earlier pebbles of input. ...
    (sci.math)
  • Re: Something more interesting, please!
    ... Neurons are not equivalent to phenomenal experiences. ... latch onto ideas like firing patterns in the network to explain it. ... self image the brain builds in an attempt to define itself. ... If you drop an apple on the ground, it produces a mark in the dirt. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: consciousness
    ... And their is the human and their brain, ... of pattern detectors in our brain operating on the sensory data streams ... Neurons are in direct contact with other neurons, ... can be described in terms of the patterns ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: Simulating the brain
    ... convinces me that simulating any "sufficiently ... brain is set up to _learn_ how to recognise patterns ... Regardless of the "networks" within a nerve cell, ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: Why human colonization may be irrelevant
    ... >> the same kinds of things about the human brain. ... > I think you are underestimating how well we understand the human brain. ... > other tasks by changing the set of patterns stored. ... > the right place then a cell sends a signal saying we have a match. ...
    (sci.space.policy)
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