memory and consciousness

Feelings are body movements: happy = towards, sad/pain = away.

Memories are results of the brain checking out reality and encoding its findings.

The brain is active. It has modules with agendas (language is an example).

Consciousness and memory use the same pathways.

memory formation and consciousness

If you're not conscious when it happens, you don't form memories of the event.

Is consciousness some kind of pre-sorting of material to thin it down? Consciousness seems to be a selection of key aspects, of salient features...is this due to limited storage space?

Memory formation and consciousness may be one and the same thing. Is this Edelman's "remembered present"? Memories seem to be salient features of a momnet selected and unified.

Is consciousness the first stage of forming a memory? A snapshot framed? A filter? The synthesis of a moment? Likes frames of a movie (NOT to be shown in the Cartesian theater!)

What if consciousness were a REPLAY of the previous moment. The first replay of a memory. First view of a memory.

Maybe everything we experience consciously HAS ALREADY HAPPENED. Consciousness as our first "view" of a momory.

Then we need to explain memory. Memory is experience encoded into neurons.

edelman/totoni on perception = memory

"The rapid reentrant interactions within the dynamic core thus give rise to a sort of temporal ongoing "bootstrap," according to which changes in the pattern of firing of neuronal groups involved in perceptual categorization can select one out of scores of specific activity patterns involving the entire core—and entire memory repertoire. This selection generates a large amount of information over a short time, hence creating a scene in the remembered present. The resulting integrated state of the core constitutes a memory and thereby the MEANING of the firing of neurons involved in perceptual categorization. Therefore, in categorizing incoming stimuli, the adult brain goes well beyond the information given, and within the dynamic core, conscious perception and memory should be considered to be two aspects of one and the same process" (p. 173).

edelman/totoni on the dynamic core

"If, as we have assumed, this blue-sensitive neuronal group is part of the dynamic core, a change in its firing will be capable of rapidly perturbing—thanks to ongoing reentrant interactions—the firing of many other neuronal groups throughout the core, including many neuronal groups situated in more anterior regions of the cortex. This perturbation will produce a switch from one integrated state of the entire core to the next" (p. 173).

The sensation of blue changes our entire conscious state. Every sensations does. Great complexity and great speed.

edelman/totoni on the dynamic core

"Through the process of reentry, however, a dynamic regime is established in which a perturbation in one group of neurons can rapidly affect the rest of the cluster" (p. 171).

These perturbations from outside the cluster (from outside consciousness) cause us to move from one conscious state to another. This is basically their explanation of how consciousness works.

edelman/totoni on visual stuff

"It is likely that normally the number of neuronal groups that respond to visual stimuli represents a large fraction of the neuronal groups participating in the dynamic core" (p. 169).

Visual neurons fire at high rates; neurons in the prefrontal cortex (thinking) have a more restricted range of firing. This is why the arrows for thought are shorter on p. 164.

edelman/totoni on qualia

Perceptions are informative because they "rule out a more or less equal number of conscious states and this is exactly the way in which the meaning of the selected state is defined" (p. 168).

edelman/totoni on qualia

"The pure sensation of red is a particular neural state identified by a point within the N-dimensional neural space defined by the integrated activity of all the groups of neurons that constitute the dynamic core" (p. 167).

"The quale of the pure sensation of red corresponds to the discrimination that has been made among billions of other states within the same neural reference space" (p. 167).

But you can't isolate the sensation of red like a grain of sand. It's part of a fabric.

"Every different conscious state deserves to be called a quale" (p. 168).

edelman/totoni on qualia

"A key implication of our hypothesis is that the legitimate neural reference space for conscious experience, any conscious experience, including that of color, if given not by the activity of any individual neuronal group...but by the activity of the entire dynamic core" (p. 164-5).

In other words, the sensation of red occurs not in a few neurons firing "red" but in the entire dynamic core (the re-entrant clusters firing in isolation and quasi-simultaneously). The sensation of red is inextricable from the conscious state that contains it.

edelman/totoni

The sensation of seeing red as a perturbation of the dynamic core that affects the rest of the cluster (p. 171).

edelman/totoni

The dynamic core is essentially separate from the rest of the brain...minimally connected, interacting minimally with it. This is odd. Does part of the brain secede? The dynamic core as a neural Old South or a neural Staten Island?

edelman/totoni

"Qualia are high-order discriminations among a large number of states of the dynamic core...they are both highly integrated and extraordinariy informative" (p. 155).

The sensation of redness as the sensation of NOT orange-indigo-violet-yellow-blue-green? The taste of strawberries as NOT the taste of everything else? What it's like to be a bat as NOT what it's like to be anything else?

That's their use of the concept of "information."

edelman/totoni

Consciousness as holding pattern in the brain: re-entrant interactions between groups is circular until it reaches a critical point? Sounds like a description of thinking!

edelman/totoni

Transmission of information = storage of information in the brain (p. 138).

edelman/totoni

Neural darwinism: most adaptive conscious states selected? or conscious states generated and success leads to selection? Darwinistic competition between conscious states where adaptive states win out (and re-enforce successful connections)? Dynamic core is fast (quasi-simlultaneous) and strong. Consciousness/dynamic core maximizes interactions between neuronal groups (simultaneous interactions). Dynamic core = perfect storm of neuronal interaction (their image is of a galaxy).

edelman/totoni

Consciousness arising from complexity: the greatest degree of complexity occurs when many specialized neural clusters are connected simultaneously. Each cluster is working on its own problem (color, shape, distance) and when they are all connected, the result is a pattern that very much makes a difference to the brain because it is differentiated. Contrast this with the diffuse way neurons fire in slow wave sleep: lots of individual neurons (not working in groups) firing simultaneously but with low complexity: in a way that does not make a difference to the brain because the pattern is too diffuse (p. 133-134).

3 main elements

It seems to me there are three main components to consciousness: visual (the world we see out there); auditory (thoughts = talking to oneself); and the sensation/movement of the body. It seems like part of the brain constructs the visual scene, part of the brain debates what to do about it and part of the brain moves the body around in the world. Then there is feedback from the body and the cycle starts all over again, incessantly.

edelman/totoni

One part brain often needs to synchronize a LIMITED number of perceptions so that another part of the brain can act on the "scene" thus created (p. 121)?

edelman/totoni

Consciousness: synchronization of brain areas in "real" time (or not so real: what they call "the remembered present").

edelman/totoni

Higher degrees of consciousness mean higher levels of salience, focus, intensity.

edelman/totoni

The more areas of the brain that are activated, the more the level of consciousness increases.