Mind model

[Haritz_irizar]

Some of my ideas about the basic nature of mind and how the brain works (excuse my terrible english, I'm a Spaniard and can't avoid that):

•   The nervous system is a network of neurons connected to each other in a complex way.
•   Mental events (such as thoughts, images, sounds and sensations) do not occur as a result of neuron activity: neuron activity and mental events ARE THE SAME THING!!!! When someone “has an idea”, it is inaccurate to say that this happens as a result of the activation of a certain set of neurons; rather, we should say that the activation of a certain set of neurons is what we refer to as “having an idea”. It is wrong, in my opinion, to state that different mental functions are encoded in different places in the brain. Instead, we ought to say that in each such case we have assigned such-and-such a name to those sets of neuron activation events.
•   If the whole nervous system (and the central nervous system in particular) is viewed as a single complex neuron network, then abilities associated with the brain (such as intelligence, memory and so on) are simply the intrinsic characteristics of that network in consequence of the way the latter is organised. Just as, when people gather together in groups, those groups acquire further characteristics that are not merely the sum of the characteristics of its individual members, so also complex accumulations of neurons come to have characteristics that cannot be obtained just by adding together the characteristics of the neurons taken individually. But these are characteristics of the network and are the result of the network’s organisation. If we were to take the same neurons and arrange them differently, the characteristics of the resulting network would differ.
•   For example, memory may be described as the brain’s tendency to replicate (often imperfectly) patterns of neuron activation. So, let us suppose that we received certain information from our eyes at a certain point in time. That information generated a certain pattern of neuron activity in our brain (depending entirely on the structure of the connections between neurons), and we (our brain, in reality) refer to that activation event as an image. In this particular case we may label this activation event in our brain as the living room of the house we are about to buy in London. If the same or a very similar activation pattern occurs again in our brain we say that we have recalled the image of the living room of the house we are about to buy in London.
•   But not all mental events in life get repeated, and it is rather obvious that if a given mental event is experienced frequently this increases the likelihood of it happening again (as is well known to anyone who has had to spend long hours studying). Moreover, many studies claim that use reinforces the connections between neurons and that non-use weakens them. Thus if we see the living room of the house we are about to buy in London many times, if, that is, the activation event that is synonymous with the production of that image in our minds occurs often, the connections between neurons that are activated by that event will be strengthened and the probability of that particular activation pattern being repeated will be greater. It follows that memories are not really kept anywhere, there is not somewhere where the information is stored, but rather the event referred to as remembering is made possible by the arrangement of the neuron network. Thus anyone who thinks it is possible to transfer information in the human brain onto computers should think again, because THERE IS NO SUCH INFORMATION TO BE TRANSFERRED!!!! Let’s consider a science-fiction scenario in which someone were to create a person with a nervous system having exactly the same arrangement of neurons as me: this person will have the same memories I do, the same childhood reminiscences of my friends, home and numerous incidents, since MEMORY IS A PROPERTY OF THE NETWORK THAT OCCURS AS A RESULT OF THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE NEURONS!!!! Yet inevitably this person who initially shares my ideas and recollections would go on to have different experiences from mine and eventually there would be an accumulation of modifications in the structure of his or her brain which would not take place in mine, so that the two minds would gradually become differentiated.
•   So what makes every person’s mind unique is the arrangement of one’s neuron network. Considering that we each have between 15 and 33 billion neurons in our brain, each of which is connected to other neurons by an average of ten thousand synapses, a wide variety of different minds would indeed seem to be possible! And if, as was suggested, the organisation of the nervous system is somehow determined by the relationship between itself and the environment, the possession of distinct experiences may also cause people to have different neuron structures from each other.
•   Hence, the information in our brain does not reside in cells and molecules, it is to be found in the arrangement of our neuron network. OUR MIND, THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS ARE NOTHING MORE THAN INTRINSIC CHARACTERISTICS OF A NEURON NETWORK ORGANISED IN A PARTICULAR MANNER!!!
•   This means that the activity of our nervous system consists of a continuous succession of neuron activation events ranging over time from the first synapse created in the mother’s womb to the cessation of brain activity at the time of death. What is more, at least in theory (in practice I think present-day technology is very far indeed from having the capacity for this), if such a nervous system were a completely closed system (isolated from any contact with the environment) and if we disposed of an individual’s complete connectome (an explicit map of all the neurons and all the connections between them), it should be possible to predict, with a high level of confidence, how, given an initial neuron activation pattern, that pattern would subsequently change.
•   However, if it ever becomes possible to draw up a complete connectome, we will face the same problem confronting us respecting the genome at present: we will not know how to interpret it. We will not know (or at least not exactly), when observing a given neuron activation pattern in a person’s head, what mental process it corresponds to. To find that out, it will be necessary to establish a statistic relation between mental events and activation patterns, although I cannot say how that will be done.

[StriatumPDM]

Well, this is close to my Mind model.

[Haritz_irizar]

ChantiPDM:

If your Mind Model is close to mine, then, you may don't agree with some of my ideas. We could discuss them.

[Steffen]

I don't totally agree on your point, that everything results from the arrangement of the neurons and cells and molecules don't contribute. I believe it is important to look deeper into the cells. For example different kinds of receptors lead to different kinds of neuronal activiation. Neuronal activition in turn has an influence on the expression of diverse receptors (as in LTP or LTD for example) or on dendritic growth (which then alters the arrangement of your network). You probably agree that receptors are molecules, and these molecules are located within cells. There are also cells releasing different kinds of neurotransmitter at different synapses (within the same cell!) and hence they have the ability to e.g. excite and inhibit other cells at the same time. Again this can have an influence on the arrangement.
I totally agree with your connectionist view, but you should not exclude the cellular or molecular level from your thoughts. They may become more and more important as research advances...

[Haritz_irizar]

Steffen:

You should notice that, among all those ideas, there is one that is the central one and lies just in the middle between biology and philosophy:

- Mental events are not a consecuence of neural activation, but are neural activation itself. For example, what's an image? How do you define the word image in space-time? How do you define it inside the limits of nature? You could say that, simply, is a kind of neural activation. What I mean is that there is nothing "above" brain activity. Our brain itself names those neural activation events as images, thoughts, sensations, but they are no more than that, pure neural activity, and not an epiphenomenon of it.

What do you think?

[Steffen]

Sounds admissable. I just wanted to point out a topic in your model to which I don't fully agree.

[voynarazuma]

So I'm a nube, but I just quickly wanted to comment on a few points in your model that seem to be either in conflict with themselves or with some experimental insights. You state that "OUR MIND, THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS ARE NOTHING MORE THAN INTRINSIC CHARACTERISTICS OF A NEURON NETWORK ORGANISED IN A PARTICULAR MANNER!!!" but then at the same time you admit that "the organisation of the nervous system is somehow determined by the relationship between itself and the environment, the possession of distinct experiences may also cause people to have different neuron structures from each other." It seems like the latter statement for you is a justification for how different minds can exist because after all if all minds were simply the product of intrinsic neuronal wiring, which is resistant to influence from the outside world then we would all have the same mind (assuming our neuronal circuitry was identical to each others), which is okay, I understand what you mean. But the organization of neuronal circuitry is not only dependent on the transcriptional programmes that guide development, but also on the influence of external forces which physically affect those programs and the wiring of the brain. For example, during learning post-synaptic cells may rewire to different pre-synaptic cells or vice versa, which means that experience in itself can change the physical configuration of neuronal circuits. This means that our mind, thoughts, feelings, memories, behaviours are not a reflection of intrinsic characteristics of a neuronal network but are a combination of that + environmental influences. This obviously traces back to the whole nature/nurture debate, but from the experimental evidence out there, it seems to be a nice balance of both.
In addition, assuming a crazy hypothetical world where everyone had exactly the same physical organization of neurons in their nervous system, there would still be some variability in behavioral phenotypes because there are certain aspects of neurotransmission that are not predictable. For example, phenomena such as ion channel opening, variability in membrane voltage fluctuations, vesicular release, and neuronal avalanches are stochastic processes that abide by some probability distribution (typically power laws), so they are not actually predictable and their activity certainly has an effect on single neuron firing properties as well as network events (oscillations, waves, synchrony, avalanches).
    I certainly agree with you that the mind is a continuous process rather than a correlation to neuronal activity. Neuronal activity is the mind ( so I think, and you do as well) but the mind is not just a mirror of the brain's structure, there are other factors at play.

[WilliamStevens]

Hi, this is Willams.
All the above posts are posted by the member of this site are such anice posts.

Thankyou

[jasonwatson]

Hi, this is Willams.
All the above posts are posted by the member of this site are such anice posts.

Thankyou

Hi there William.

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