Does the human brain work like picrel? Are there vestiges of older neuronal connection patterns and rudimentary ways of encoding information from previous points in evolution when we were flatworms etc. that get translated into higher, more complex types of neural encoding as you get closer to the conscious level? Or is it all equally complex?
What are some books on this?
Those are matrix inspiration source material. I'm not talking about human machine interfacing directly, just as a metaphor for neural architecture.
This is so outside IQfy's field of expertise, as most people posting are just gonna make up some fancy sounding bull shit that matches their preferred tumblr aesthetic this month or post troony Lain memes. People on this board are still impressed with the C programming language. The brain might as well be a fractal of homosexuals fricking one another in the ass for these neanderthals.
yeah i know, but IQfy is too moronic, and though this board is really gay, it tends to have a higher average IQ. IQfy tends to not like neuro topics very much. I saw a bicameral mind thread a few weeks back, closest thing to what I'm talking about even if pretty far off, figured here was my best bet.
Your best bet is to delve into scientific neuroscience papers and despair at the primitive state of non-answers it truly is for now.
>despair at the primitive state of non-answers it truly is for now
Cuck mentality
How so?
human brain is hardware. language is the environment. evolution directly modifies the hardware. analysis of evolution abstraction might be made, but this is akin to comparison of computing architectures.
The best research we've got currently in the Default Mode Network (DMN) in the brain.
The DMN significantly differs from computer operations. The DMN is a network of interconnected brain regions primarily active during restful introspection and mind-wandering, rather than task-specific activities where the Task-Positive Network (TPN) is activated. Unlike a computer's digital linear and binary processing, the DMN exhibits complex analog non-linear dynamics.
The DMN, itself, is highly plastic, dynamic, and adaptive unlike a computer's embedded systems.
>highly plastic, dynamic, and adaptive
these are just state changes. any computer has the same thing. neurology can't flip bits tho, so it must change state via some chemical/physical alteration
The state itself is so plastic that it can compensate for loss of brain matter. There are case studies of people who have lost significant brain matter, even half of their brains if I remember correctly, and they still function relatively normally. Obviously, they most likely still have a DMN but it adapted and compensated for the brain loss.
It is isn't like this with computers where damage to the RAM could pretty much shut it down. The closest analog of a computer to the human brain is RAM, and they don't function similarly at all.
I should have mentioned that damage to the brainstem is immensely dangerous because it has a crucial role in controlling vital functions such as respiration, heart rate, and autonomic functions, so while the DMN can compensate for cortical damage, damage to the brainstem is life threatening.
It's scattered in research papers but most books on the neural underpinnings of consciousness do touch on it.
>RAM
I meant to say CPU instead of RAM***
Can you recommend any books that explore the topic, or is at scattered around in researfh papers?
Once again the computer shit is just an analogy, what I'm asking is, however the brain encodes information, are there different methods of encoding or storing or processing info as you get to the more newly evolved areas of the brain.
what language does the machine speak? How is it different from the hardware? How does the hardware understand it?
it's just a bunch of instructions, each denoting a simple operation. for example, one instruction would take the data at X address in the memory and write it to the A register, another would take it from X + 1 and write to the B register, then finally an instruction would get whatever is on A and B, add them together, and write it back on A. the processor doesn't understand anything, it is a bunch of logic gates structured as to perform the corresponding functions as instructions are fed to it.
No.
Computers are man made machines, and while a mechanical ball joint could describe relatively well the hip joint of the human body, the computer-mind analogy is very poor and weak to describe the mechanisms of the mind, that in many aspects remains unknown.
Surely the brain in some functions can resemble a computer, and that's a metaphor used by cognitive psychology. It is a helpful analogy but it remains gross and very coarse.
Computers are essentially built on switches, the brain is built on neurons that alone are not only far more complex in behaviour but also living cells, and living cells in general are of incredible complexity.
Also the pic you posted is not how computers work. The computer really works with the two bottom most layers (machine language and hardware). The image depicts the various layers of programming languages that help humans in writing programs. Basically tools that abstract the cumbersome and cryptic machine language into concepts more familiar with the human mind.
Then if you bring in AI and neuronal networks it's basically code that mimics the mechanisms of a neuron, but quite as far as a showroom dummy mimics a hunan being, and still it runs on computer hardware that again is based on switches.
I think it might be the case that the brain processes stimuli on the gene level. Instead of neurons only reacting to stimuli via electrical signals, there could be a combination of signals that trigger gene changes and allow the neurons to self modify, kind of like a self assembling transistor. It's probably happens in very specific conditions, this is something that we can't even imagine being able to code because of the sheer complexity, we are still stuck on the hardware, software dichotomy.
There's no reason for the brain to work like that. All high level languages get compiled into ASM interpreted by the CPU to run binary instructions but we only go through these bothersome steps because our ape tech can only function linearly and primitively through a bunch of logic gates switched on or off through even more primitive and wasteful use of electricity. We don't know how the brain works AT ALL though even our linguistic abstractions of modular and multi paralelled regions stimulated by ion pulses and carrying chemical signals from one end to another already show a kind of machine that in its wholeness is infinitely more complex. So your latter hypothetical answer is more plausible.
There is a level of refined, subconscious information filtering appreciable through our senses though. Even though numerous bullshit theories have arisen from this fact it's still undeniable that our perception is affected and crafted due to evolutionary pressures and the state of the external world is nothing like what we perceive. In that way it's a lot like (and just as fricking gay as) using Python or something.
I'm seconding the request for book recommendations though. Also seconding GEB for something tangentially related.
You at least seem to get what I'm talking about. I guess to further refine the point I'm wondering specifically if the pattern of synaptic connections is different in the older areas of the brain like the stem, like a more rudimentary system, and then if in the newer areas like the neocortex there's some sort of translation that needs to happen, where the connection pattern is more complex or somehow different and there are things like glial cells involved.
I don't have the answer and I'm running low on sleep but as far as I'm aware the connections should be instantaneous with parts of the brain fitting the needs of the rest and adapting. That's how biological systems work. They might be doing some inner signal translation (if we can call it that) but it's hard to figure out even when observing activity. Either way you might get better answers by researching the connections of the midbrain all the way down to the spine and comparing them to something like the frontal lobe, or looking at notes of brain activity through surgery, MRIs and studies on magnetic stimulation. I'm sure there's enough information out there for you to at least get something close to satisfactory, though this is more in the realm of research rather than something a book could offer you. A lot of it is still published though so do some digging and try your luck with sci-hub.
MRIs are more about localization of function and this this is like a cell level type thing.
>researching the connections of the midbrain all the way down to the spine and comparing them to something like the frontal lobe
this is a good idea though.
>Does the human brain work like picrel?
Short answer: no
Long answer: frick no
>vestiges of older neuronal connection patterns
The older patterns are still there, but they're not vestigial - if anything your higher brain structures exist to serve the more primitive ones. The most primitive just want food, shelter and sex. Food shelter and sex are easier to get as part of a social group, so the higher structures do things like empathy and reputation management. Right at the top you have language and abstract reasoning to boost social status and increase group resources.
Pic related is an oversimplified model of the brain, but the general concept still applies. The terminal goals were defined millions of years ago and the newer constructs pursue instrumental goals in service of those same terminal goals. For example:
>become great writer
>great writing = bestsellers
>bestsellers = rich and famous
>money = expensive resources; fame = high status social groups
>expensive resources = best food + best housing; high status people = best sexual partners
>food, shelter and sex
No matter what your massive human neocortex comes up with the chain will always terminate in food, shelter and sex. Every additional construct layered on top is just a more sophisticated way to get the same things the flatworm wants. Even when you want counterproductive things it's only because they hack your brain by simulating something that would lead to food shelter and sex. For example, when you play FPS games you get a simulation of hunting, which you are supposed to enjoy so you bring back meat for your tribe.
Computer programming is precisely the other way round. The terminal goals are redefined every time someone writes a new program, usually in a top level language. Old code is only kept around if it's needed by new programs. When boomers were writing the first compilers and kernels they could have never anticipated you would connect to a disreputable server to ask a global network of anonymous shitposters about how the brain works, yet here you are.
>more complex types of neural encoding
The things encoded for are more complex. I'm not sure if the way the neurons actually form connections gets mores complex. You should probably post on IQfy and hope a neurologist sees it. Or just directly write to a neurologist at your local college.
>as you get closer to the conscious level
This is very difficult to define, as consciousness is subjective. You could assign relative probabilities of consciousness to different organisms, but no one yet has a test that determines whether something is conscious or not.
>some books on this
Honestly just high school biology textbooks. Maybe The Selfish Gene if you're struggling with the difference between evolutionary biology and top-down design.
If you're interested in the hard problem of consciousness as it relates to neurology I would look into some of Roger Penrose's latest work.
>I'm not sure if the way the neurons actually form connections gets mores complex
This was the entire question. You wrote all that and you missed the question.
>dude does my endocrine system work like a car's coolant system??
Very obviously meant integumentary system. I renounce my biology degree I knew I should've studied business.
Ask IQfy and /x/
/x/ doesn't know anything about anything. they don't even know basic UFO lore and a teenage girl who's like kinda into astrology i guess has a more comprehensive understanding of magic.
>/x/ doesn't know anything about anything
that's the thing
better than nuIQfy false knowledge
Its not noble or Socratic, /x/ literally doesn't know anything about /x/. Even a casual on reddit will know about Socorro landing/Lonnie Zamora, but there a thread up there RN where almost no one had heard of it despite the fact they discuss ayys on a daily basis.
>the brain is like a computer bro everything maps 1-1 to computer terms bro its all just CPUs and shit bro
I only count six plateux. You need at least 994 more plateux.
Ask in IQfy or /x/, gay,