But invertebrates and insects learn things. Mammals are cool though but they do not have an exclusive on plasticity.

DavidMcC wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:Okay we figured out that instinct is a crappy term that we can't agree on.O figured that out ten years ago. What is it's pertinence to this overall discussion?

It is only "crappy" because it historically includes several different processes, such as reflex reactions, and various "folk" uses, which includes learned habits (and which actually replace reptilian-style instincts, but are not of genetic origin).
The pertinence of true "genetic"instincts to the OP topic is that the mammalian replacement of reptilian instincts with learned habits requires conscious study by the infant to acquire good habits, so that it might survive without the instincts that might anyhow have become inappropriate, due to changes in the locakl environment that may occur faster than evolution can keep up with. Thus my version of mammalian C is a product of that evolution. It's what I've been saying all along in these threads.

What do you mean by "reptilian instincts"? Are you confusing the myth of the "reptile brain" with instincts? It should be obvious, but for clarity I'll just point out that reptiles don't rely on instincts for much of what they do.

DavidMcC wrote:The pertinence of true "genetic"instincts to the OP topic is that the mammalian replacement of reptilian instincts with learned habits requires conscious study by the infant to acquire good habits, so that it might survive without the instincts that might anyhow have become inappropriate, due to changes in the locakl environment that may occur faster than evolution can keep up with. Thus my version of mammalian C is a product of that evolution. It's what I've been saying all along in these threads.

I knew nothing about learning in reptiles or insects. I found this..

Wilkinson et al wrote:Social learning in a non-social reptile (Geochelone carbonaria)

The ability to learn from the actions of another is adaptive, as it is a shortcut for acquiring new information. However, the evolutionary origins of this trait are still unclear. There is evidence that group-living mammals, birds, fishes and insects can learn through observation, but this has never been investigated in reptiles. Here, we show that the non-social red-footed tortoise (Geochelone carbonaria) can learn from the actions of a conspecific in a detour task; non-observer animals (without a conspecific demonstrator) failed. This result provides the first evidence that a non-social species can use social cues to solve a task that it cannot solve through individual learning, challenging the idea that social learning is an adaptation for social living.

Federico wrote:I quote:

"......[i]The brain may make some decisions up to 10 seconds before those decisions bubble up to conscious thought, a new study shows.

mindhack wrote:Are you sure you meant 10 seconds? Ten seconds seems an aweful long time between the point of decision and its conscious thought.

I am sure the quotation is correct.

SpeedOfSound wrote:The cerebellum is primarily a prediction and correction device. Kind of like a gyroscope. You will not find much support for episodic memory there.

There may not be much support at the moment, and I may be wrong about it, but there has to be some structure with an awful lot of neurons, and is not part of the "conscious" mind, but is contacted by it when we try to remember things, and when we are trying to deliberately memorise things. Also, there are several distinct regions of the cerebellum, all with the same structure, but not the same exact function. Furthermore, if long term memory is entirely in the neocortex (to which it is claimed memories are transferred for long term storage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episodic_memory#The_hippocampus.27s_role_in_memory_storage
But if episodic memories are stored long term in the neocortex, it is odd that we are not always conscious of long term memories, only occasionally so (when they are brought into working memory).
Thus, experiments that show that the hippocampus is "involved" in episodic memory actually only show that it is important to the process of "programming"/transferring to the long term memory, not that it IS the long term memory.

Wilkinson [i]et al[/i]. wrote:This result provides the first evidence that a non-social species can use social cues to solve a task that it cannot solve through individual learning.

Can you supply a link to that paper, Graham, because I do not understand how this "non-social" species is supposed to learn without individual learning either!

SOS, if the neocortex is the long tem memory store, doesn't that show that it is not in the "C" loop? Otherwise, we would be permanently aware even of long term memories, and that obviously isn't so.

DavidMcC wrote:there has to be some structure with an awful lot of neurons, and is not part of the "conscious" mind, but is contacted by it when we try to remember things, and when we are trying to deliberately memorise things.

Do you have some particular reason to rule out memory distributed across the brain? Fro example, why can't a visual element of a memory be part of the visual cortex, an auditory element in the auditory cortex and some movement spacial element somewhere else? I'm just wondering about why we should expect there to be a "central database" for memory.

Specific long-term memory traces in primary auditory cortex

Environmental Modification of the Visual Cortex and the Neural Basis of Learning and Memory

Mr.Samsa wrote:It should be obvious, but for clarity I'll just point out that reptiles don't rely on instincts for much of what they do.

Isn't that the real "myth", based on your inaccurate concept of the "immutable" instict? Can you give references to reptiles studying like mammals, even when there is no parent to teach them? (The guardianship of parent crocodilians over their offspring doesn't count, because they are merely acting as soldiers, leaving the offspring to fend for themselves in terms of feeding).

DavidMcC wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:The cerebellum is primarily a prediction and correction device. Kind of like a gyroscope. You will not find much support for episodic memory there.

There may not be much support at the moment, and I may be wrong about it, but there has to be some structure with an awful lot of neurons, and is not part of the "conscious" mind, but is contacted by it when we try to remember things, and when we are trying to deliberately memorise things. Also, there are several distinct regions of the cerebellum, all with the same structure, but not the same exact function. Furthermore, if long term memory is entirely in the neocortex (to which it is claimed memories are transferred for long term storage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episodic_memory#The_hippocampus.27s_role_in_memory_storage
But if episodic memories are stored long term in the neocortex, it is odd that we are not always conscious of long term memories, only occasionally so (when they are brought into working memory).
Thus, experiments that show that the hippocampus is "involved" in episodic memory actually only show that it is important to the process of "programming"/transferring to the long term memory, not that it IS the long term memory.

a. anterograde amnesia is highly associated with HC damage.

b. Memory isn't in a place. It's the same delusion as C being in a place.

c. Episodic memory is a system across the entire cortex with the HC being at it's center, in the oldest place, and serving a number of roles.

d. All research that I have seen on the cerebellum is that it is a computer-like mechanism for learning motor skills. It is a much simpler device and is one place that I would be inclined to call out the unconscious if I ever wanted to use that crappy word again.

e. The cerebellum is always taking input and giving output no matter what task yuou are engaged in.

It is interesting to see that somehow the guy that wrote the wiki article on this engram business in the cerebellum was using a robotic sort of thinking that often results in errors. Or else he didn't read the papers he referenced.

That said it is possible that we will find the cerebellum is involved in higher order concepts involving spatial prediction and extension such as coding for an expectation that a trees branches will have a certain geometry.

But it's a part in a system and a very computer-like part. It corrects for paths with transforms that are far more rigid than cerebral cortex.

Lots of neurons are needed to swing through the trees.

GrahamH wrote:Do you have some particular reason to rule out memory distributed across the brain? Fro example, why can't a visual element of a memory be part of the visual cortex, an auditory element in the auditory cortex and some movement spacial element somewhere else? I'm just wondering about why we should expect there to be a "central database" for memory.

But it is so distributed when it is shorty-term memory. I just wonder whether it still would be after consolidation, which has to be to somewhere else.

DavidMcC wrote:SOS, if the neocortex is the long tem memory store, doesn't that show that it is not in the "C" loop? Otherwise, we would be permanently aware even of long term memories, and that obviously isn't so.

The occurrent process of an organism is a system of attentional awareness. You yourself have promoted oscillatory loops as being implicated in this. If every neuron in the cortex was in an active thalamo-cortical firing pattern you would experience only a great flash of white light and die within 20 seconds. That's my guess.

What we tend to mean by C is the many things we are attending to during the occurrent process of being alive. Along with a cognitive certainty that we do it through time.

DavidMcC wrote:

GrahamH wrote:Do you have some particular reason to rule out memory distributed across the brain? Fro example, why can't a visual element of a memory be part of the visual cortex, an auditory element in the auditory cortex and some movement spacial element somewhere else? I'm just wondering about why we should expect there to be a "central database" for memory.

But it is so distributed when it is shorty-term memory. I just wonder whether it still would be after consolidation, which has to be to somewhere else.

That somewhere is the cerebral cortex.

DavidMcC wrote:

GrahamH wrote:Do you have some particular reason to rule out memory distributed across the brain? Fro example, why can't a visual element of a memory be part of the visual cortex, an auditory element in the auditory cortex and some movement spacial element somewhere else? I'm just wondering about why we should expect there to be a "central database" for memory.

But it is so distributed when it is shorty-term memory. I just wonder whether it still would be after consolidation, which has to be to somewhere else.

Why does it have to be somewhere else?

More importantly, it seems to me that moving the pattern is changing the pattern context. How would the semantics of memory be retained if it could be moved to some other brain area? How could it be restored into original context on recall?

Moving data in structure in a brain would be a no-no, so if it gets moved what is moved and how?

OTOH it seems possible to have distributed memory patterns that become less easily stimulated but still there.

b. Memory isn't in a place. It's the same delusion as C being in a place.

We have discussed this before - the NCC issue. As soon as you admit that any part of the brain is specialised, you should realise that the BASIS OF C (by which I mean reasoning, verbal and non-verbal) is one of those specialisations, and therefore likely to be localised, even though most of the brain is "invloved" in one way or other. You seem to ignore the distinction between function and interaction - the driven and the driver (thre understanding of which requires a combination of high true temporal and spatial resolution to analyse, as opposed to high sampling rates). As with a computer, different parts do different things, even though the control areas need the controlled areas to function.
[/quote]Lots of neurons are needed to swing through the trees.[/quote]
Of course, but nearly all of them in the brain? Like I say, though I could be wrong that it is the cerebellum that acts as unconscious memory store, but it does have most of the neurons.

GrahamH wrote:Why does it have to be somewhere else?

Because we're not conscious of long term memory, but are of working memory. If it didn't get moved, we would remain conscious of it. See the Wiki link in post #125, above for an example of moving/copying memory.

In my exhausting, and often contrasted, effort to reduce everything related to Brain function from a vague and metaphysical conceptualization to a much more prosaic combination of physico-biochemical mechanisms, smetimes I get a helpful hand from the scientific literature. Such is now the case with an article entitled "Brain Cells Found In Monkeys That May Be Linked To Self-Awareness And Empathy In Humans", written by Henry Evrard, neuroanatomist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, and reported by Medical News Today. And I quote a few paragraphs:

".....The anterior insular cortex is a small brain region that plays a crucial role in human self-awareness and in related neuropsychiatric disorders. A unique cell type - the von Economo neuron (VEN) - is located there. For a long time, the VEN was assumed to be unique to humans, great apes, whales and elephants, now Dr. Evrard has found that the VEN occurs also in the insula of macaque monkeys. This finding offers new and much-needed opportunities to examine in detail the connections and functions of a cell and brain region that could have a key role in human self-awareness and in mental disorders including autism and specific forms of dementia. ..."

".....The very anterior part of the insula in particular is where humans consciously sense subjective emotions, such as love, hate, resentment, self-confidence or embarrassment. In relation to these feelings, the anterior insula is involved in various psychopathologies....."The von Economo neuron (VEN) occurs almost exclusively in the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex......"

"....Knowing the functions of the VEN and its connections to other regions of the brain in monkeys could give us clues on the evolution of the anatomical substrate of self-awareness in humans and may help us in better understanding serious neuropsychiatric disabilities including autism, or even addictions such as to drugs or smoking...."

DavidMcC wrote:As with a computer, different parts do different things, even though the control areas need the controlled areas to function.

That is a critcal difference between brains and computers. Computers are serial devices passing data through modules who's functions are modified by data (program).

Brains are massively parallel with 'program' written in the structure.

To strain the analogy a bit, you could have an audio processor, a vision processor, a language processor etc as separate connected computers. Then we have to ask if we need a 'consciousness processor o interrogate all the other processors, or if the 'swarm intelligence' of the colony of processors constitutes a conscious system without a "homunculus processor".

Just kicking ideas around.

SpeedOfSound wrote:What we tend to mean by C is the many things we are attending to during the occurrent process of being alive. Along with a cognitive certainty that we do it through time.

Can you say what things we do NOT "attend to during the occurrent process of being alive", but which must nevertheless occur.

_________
Generally, you still don't seem to distinguish between involvement and driving.