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December 23, 2023 - January 5, 2024
the qualifying body state, positive or negative, is accompanied and rounded up by a corresponding thinking mode: fast moving and idea rich, when the body-state is in the positive and pleasant band of the spectrum, slow moving and repetitive, when the body-state veers toward the painful band.
unique human properties, among them the ability to anticipate the future and plan accordingly within a complex social environment; the sense of responsibility toward the self and others; and the ability to orchestrate one’s survival deliberately, at the command of one’s free will.
instruments of mind—attention, perception, memory, language, intelligence. In this type of discrepancy, known in neuropsychology as dissociation, one or more performances within a general profile of operations are at odds with the rest.
the function of each separate brain part is not independent and that it is, rather, a contribution to the function of larger systems composed of those separate parts.
There are “systems” made up of several interconnected brain units; anatomically, but not functionally,
these systems are indeed dedicated to relatively separable operations that constitute the basis of mental functions.
The whereabouts of a unit is of paramount importance.
modules
neuroanatomy jealously preserves topological relationships among its components, there are considerable degrees of individual topographic variation that make each of our brains far
The gray matter comes in two varieties. In one variety the neurons are layered as in a cake and form a cortex. Examples are the cerebral cortex which covers the cerebral hemispheres, and the cerebellar cortex which envelops the cerebellum. In the second variety of gray matter the neurons are not layered and are organized instead like cashew nuts inside a bowl. They form a nucleus.
In this text, unless otherwise stated, systems are macroscopic and circuits are microscopic.)
Reduction in emotion may constitute an equally important source of irrational behavior.
The goal of the neuropsychological enterprise is thus to explain how certain cognitive operations and their components relate to neural systems and their components. Neuropsychology is not, or should not be, about finding the brain “localization” for a “symptom” or “syndrome.”
The powers of reason and the experience of emotion decline together, and their impairment stands out in a neuropsychological profile within which basic attention, memory, intelligence, and language appear so intact that they could never be invoked to explain the patients’ failures in judgment.
There are also connections in one direction or the other between cortical regions and subcortical nuclei, the aggregates of neurons below the cerebral cortex.
we still have no way of knowing whether the long-term effects of such drugs on the brain are any less destructive than a selective form of surgery might be. We simply have to reserve judgment.
Refering to antipsychotics. Generally relevant to novel pharmaceuticals?
asymmetrically to the cerebral hemispheres,
Probably the relative simultaneity of activity at different sites binds the separate parts of the mind together.
purposes: to survey notions to which I will appeal frequently (e.g., organism, body, brain, behavior, mind, state); to discuss briefly the neural basis of knowledge with an emphasis on its parcellated nature and its dependence on images; and to make comments on neural development.
Living organisms are changing continuously, assuming a succession of “states,” each defined by varied patterns of ongoing activity in all of its components.
Depending on the scale of analysis, the states of organisms may be discrete units or merge continuously.)
My statement about behaving organisms can now be completed by saying that not all have minds, that is, not all have mental phenomena (which is the same as saying that not all have cognition or cognitive processes). Some organisms have both behavior and cognition. Some have intelligent actions but no mind. No organism seems to have mind but no action. My view then is that having a mind means that an organism forms neural representations which can become images, be manipulated in a process called thought, and eventually influence behavior by helping predict the future, plan accordingly, and
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Images are based directly on those neural representations, and only those, which are organized topographically and which occur in early sensory cortices.
Keeping in mind that 'images' involve all the senses.
Subjectivity,
A different connotation: subject/actor, verb/action, object/acted upon.
It seems that action in a pan-psychic universe involves attention, discrimination, choice, and intention.
explicit recalled mental images
set of neuron firing dispositions within the ensemble.
dispositional representations are not topographically organized.
Seems to contradict a later reference to Tootell
a dispositional representation is a dormant firing potentiality which comes to life when neurons fire, with a particular pattern, at certain rates, for a certain amount of time, and toward a particular target which happens to be another ensemble of neurons.
Dispositional representations
Innate knowledge
Acquired knowledge
achieved by continuous modification of such dispositional representations.
The dispositional representations on the basis of which movements occur are located in premotor cortices, basal ganglia, and limbic cortices.
the main content of our thoughts, regardless of the sensory modality
essential for our thinking but are not a content of our thoughts.
Innate circuits intervene not just in bodily regulation but also in the development and adult activity of the evolutionarily modern structures of the brain.
the influence of environmental circumstances complemented and constrained by the influence of the innately and precisely set circuits concerned with biological regulation.
the innate circuits must exert a powerful influence on virtually the entire set of circuits that can be modified by experience.
innate bioregulatory circuitries,
the to-be-determined structure
a say in circuit design,
The brain needs a balance between circuits whose firing allegiances may change like quicksilver, and circuits that are resistant though not necessarily impervious to change.
The light that shines on a bona fide important item, good or bad, will shine also on its company.
As the brain incorporates dispositional representations of interactions with entities and scenes relevant for innate regulation, it increases the chances of including entities and scenes that may or may not be directly relevant to survival.
I suspect that unlike the brain stem and hypothalamus, however, whose circuitry is mostly innate and stable, the limbic system contains both innate circuitry and circuitry modifiable by the experience of the ever-evolving organism.
suprainstinctual survival strategies
consider the neurobiology supporting adaptive supraregulations,
In human societies there are social conventions and ethical rules over and above those that biology already provides. Those additional layers of control shape instinctual behavior so that it can be adapted flexibly to a complex and rapidly changing environment and ensure survival for the individual and for others (especially if they belong to the same species) in circumstances in which a preset response from the natural repertoire would be immediately or eventually counterproductive. The perils preempted by such conventions and rules may be immediate and direct (physical or mental harm), or
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subspecialization of the neocortex,
The apparatus of rationality, traditionally presumed to be neocortical, does not seem to work without that of biological regulation, traditionally presumed to be subcortical.
