Our Noisy Cortex knows more than you think

‘Noise’ in the Brain Encodes Surprisingly Important Signals

Another example of why some speak of Consciousness as the inside reflection of what’s going on within a creature’s body, down to the cellular level, as that body interacts with the world around it.

Good article and I could have added another few key quotes, but am already pushing it pretty far, so take the time to read Jordana’s entire article you won’t regret it.

Jordana Cepelewicz, November 7, 2019

Activity in the visual cortex and other sensory areas is dominated by signals about body movements, down to little tics and twitches. Scientists are now rethinking how they study and conceive of perception.

… “you would just record spontaneous activity, and you would see that it seemed to have a mind of its own,” according to David McCormick, a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon.

“This gave rise to a view of the brain as being somehow either very [noisy], or using some type of high-level statistics to get over this noisiness,” he said.

But over the past decade, that view has changed. It’s become apparent that this purported randomness and variability relates not just to messiness in the brain’s neural mechanics, but also to behavioral states like arousal and stress — states that seem to affect perception and decision-making as well. There’s more to all the noise, scientists realized, than they had assumed. …

… Throughout the brain, even in low-level sensory areas like the visual cortex, neurons encode information about far more than their immediately relevant task. They also babble about whatever other behaviors the animal happens to be engaging in, …

… But things got even stranger in 2010. …

Finding Sense in the Swirling Kaleidoscope

Kenneth Harris and Matteo Carandini, neuroscientists at University College London, started with a different goal: to characterize the structure of the spontaneous activity in the visual cortex that occurs even when the rodent gets no visual stimulation. …

“If we look at the mouse as a whole,” McCormick said, “all of a sudden, that general activity, that swirling kaleidoscope of activity in the brain, starts to make sense.” (He and his lab reported similar findings in a recent preprint.)

The activity didn’t just reflect the general state of the mouse’s alertness or arousal, or the fact that the animal was moving. The visual cortex knew exactly what the animal was doing, down to the details of its individual movements. …

This speaks to the amazing connectivity between brain and body and experience.
Remember Dr. Solms’ work

The answers to human’s super duper “Consciousness” can be found through biology and understanding our body’s evolutionary heritage. No need for meta-physical, nor quantum level riddles (that are blown way out of proportion).

Any thoughts?

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Microtubules are the data processors in every cell of every organism on earth. They are the observer and recorders of all sensory information being processed. MT are the experiential connection to the exterior and interior environment.

Bacterial flagella are dynamically controlled by a microtubular machine. A single-celled paramecium can swim and navigate via its microtubule-controlled cilia.

All experiential phenomena, conscious or unconscious is processed by microtubules in addition to the conscious and subconscious decision making of the brain that is of course fed and processed by microtubules.

The “noise” in the brain is the actual hum of the electrochemical data being processed. When that noise resonates with stored data in MT memory we call it thinking.

Silly me, I should have known.


Hey, I’ve also just read another interesting article, one that touches on stuff that’s been bandied about in the past. At the time I didn’t know the details of the experiment, still seems that doubts as to it’s ability to define what it claimed were well founded.

ON BENJAMIN LIBET: IS THE MIND AHEAD OF THE BRAIN? BEHIND IT?
by Ted Honderich

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/libetnew.html

– Determinism and Freedom Website –

The most scientific, speculative and copious thinking bearing on free will in the past three decades or so is in The Self and Its Brain, by the philosopher of science Karl Popper and the Nobel neurophysiologist J. C. Eccles. It is a kind of celebration of a thing called the self-conscious mind and its freedom. It depends greatly on the research of some Californian neurophysiologists with Professor Benjamin Libet at their head.

The research in question is taken as showing, in brief, that the mind is ahead of the brain. This research, however, has been succeeded by another period or tranche of research. It is taken by Libet himself and others to be as relevant, indeed as powerful, with respect to the question of determinism and freedom.

What it comes to, until a surprising second thought, is that the mind is behind the brain. If high reasoning by philosophers on freedom uninformed by science cannot now be reassuring, nor is there reassurance in the idea that science is uniquely placed to decide the questions.

It is somewhat less uniquely placed than philosophy. I include the piece below in a forthcoming book, On Determinism and Freedom (Edinburgh University Press, 2005), partly in order to illustrate that general point for those in need of the illustration. They include quite a few workers in the flourishing industry of the science of consciousness.



Go figure. But imagine, scientist are getting to understand the order of that processing - this is the mind we are touching and it’s not just static noise - that’s big, but guess it’s too slimy for philosophers to bother with.
That is striving to process those down to Earth details, that keep getting in the way of a good story.

Yes it is. There is an entire mental data processing loop, that begins before the data reaches the part of the brain that is responsible for the reconstruction of that data into a meaningful representative thought.

The sensory input is first codified by the sensory system, then transmitted to memory, where the data is compared to “known codes” and a coded message is distributed as a sensory experience. The experience of the present always comes after the present has
become manifest, sometimes billons of light years later! But even at close distance, reality presents before it is observed and responded to.

Only when the comparison with memory is determined, is the data released to the conscious brain that experiences “meaning” and is registered as a thought.

This process takes time, especially when the data is complex and must be integrated into smaller symbolic representation patterns of nature . It is well established that the greater the pattern complexity, the more time and complex neural network in the brain is required for processing the incoming data. It is the loop function that takes time before we consciously become aware of that what the brain thinks it is looking at.

p.s. the more I learn about the definitions of consciousness, the more I agree with Anil Seth. His TedTalk is a superb and elegant presentation of the abstract psychological and physical mechanics involved in the concept of the brain being an autonomous “individual” that issues action potentials as a response to environmental pressures and using the body as an evolved efficient survival vehicle, which is by no means the best and most athletic in actual physical properties. among other predators and in defenses against predation.

But while many of us disrespect the importance of fitness, we (all brains) rely on our individual ability to use our superior abilities of information processing and can anticipate and prepare for all possible scenarios that each brained individual needs to successfully deal with in order to procreate.

I see a different implication of this. I like your point that something happened long ago and the sensory data is just reaching our sense organs. When studying this stuff it’s common to jump to the millisecond between reality and our experience. Which is fine.

But, we all relate to misinterpreting reality as it goes by. A flash on the edge of our peripheral vision, a sound from a fan that seems like music. Longer experiences too, like someone starts telling a story, and you think ahead, thinking you know where it’s going. Then it takes a turn you didn’t expect. Worse, if you stopped listening.

I think it’s the cause of more confusion and misunderstanding than we realize.

Yes, depending on the “knowledge” stored in memory. Therefore the conscious part of "observation " always comes after the event.

This actually agrees with Penrose physics, where he proposes that the concept of observation being causal to wave-function collapse is wrong and it is the wave-function collapse that creates allows for observation. I can’t see how anyone could argue with that chronological model.

Well, first they’d have to know what all them 10 dollar words meant. Most people wouldn’t bother.

Causal events occur in chronological order, no? Time keeps things from happening all at once.

I’m sure you are familiar with the Copenhagen Interpretation?

That model argues that the wave function collapses upon observation (measurement), but that is now being replaced with Penrose’s model that quantum events and wave-function collapse do no need an observer.

Moreover, Penrose argues that the event must occur before it is even observable and in the case of the human brain, that all regular (mathematical) patterns are recognized from patterns stored in memory. When the patterns agree, the brain produces an abstract interpretation of the patterns , a “best guess” which we experience as “knowledge”. But knowledge always is the accumulated memories from prior exposure.

Principal Paradoxes of Quantum Mechanics

Oleg Kupervasser, in Application of New Cybernetics in Physics, 2017

3.2.1.2 Copenhagen Interpretation

Another interpretation is the Copenhagen interpretation, which is used in today’s papers and is the standard for most books and papers in the quantum mechanics field. This interpretation states that at the moment of the observation of macroscopic states, spontaneous reduction occurs and quantum correlations disappear, thus resulting in the paradoxes described above.

It is necessary to emphasize that the reduction in the Copenhagen interpretation occurs only for a chosen final observer in the sequence of measurements, not for all the almost macroscopic objects in the system. This phenomenon is a very important difference between the Copenhagen interpretation and some theories that postulate the spontaneous reduction of all almost-macroscopic bodies.

The Copenhagen interpretation postulates the spontaneous reduction of only one final observer. The experiment should be described from this observer’s perspective. The reduction, like the velocity of the system, depends on the choice of the final observation system.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/mathematics/copenhagen-interpretation#

I am unable to understand this kind of logic. Observing does not send any causal waves to the object being observed.

I like that, “Time keeps things from happening all at once.” I’ve tried to explain that to management, and to people I travel with, but somehow we end up going down long roads (metaphorical or otherwise) and accomplishing little or nothing or otherwise getting behind schedule. My attitude often gets blamed, instead of the basic math of speed and distance.

You know I’m not arguing, right? I’m looking at this from the point of view of people who don’t normally think about it, the people who, if you say, “you are familiar with the Copenhagen Interpretation”, they say “no”, so you stop and explain it, in brief, and you’ve totally lost them and their thinking about the latest episode of whatever’s popular on Netflix before you get back to you train of thought.

In other words, their Noisy Cortex. The Pixar movie “Inside Out” did a great job of showing what goes on in our heads while we are trying to listen

(295) Inside Out - Riley Argues with her Parents Scene - YouTube

Time is God’s way of making sure you don’t bump into yourself on the way out the door.

It is expressions like this that suggest you attach some kind of mysterious Intelligent Design to the workings of the universe.

Time has no “purpose”. Time is the measurable emergent result of chronology.

Oh lordie do I need to deconstruct this one also???

Reminded me of a cute version of this idea, that I dreamt up while I was supposed to be paying attention to catechism class

I thought it might make for an easy non controversial aside, or as Lausten would say making conversation, or as I was thinking, a little spur of the moment joke.

Now, suddenly I’m being tagged was an Intelligent Design believer. Because that’s what you want to believe I am.

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Haven’t you ever heard me point out God is a thing of our own mind’s own creation?

How do you think that jives with Intelligent Design? . . . except perhaps as an ad hoc intellectual safety net when the amazing complexity of biology overwhelms and starts frying our mortal brain cells. In which case it’s still in my head and not a real thing, out there.

You want to believe I am a victim of Abrahamic Mindset, no?

But in your missives you speak of Life and Mind as if it is some divine property outside of human knowledge. It is only here I disagree with your perspective.

I see life and mind as naturally emerging properties over and above the properties of the parts. As Tegmark observes, life and mind are ultimately formed from sub-atomic particles. All of reality is the emergent material expression of pattern complexity and density (physics)

Every physical expression in nature is achieved by the formation of specific complex atomic patterns, each expression having specific abilities over and above the sum of their parts. That is the magic of creation, each formation of greater complexity is causal to emergent enfolded potentials and abilities.

A perfect example is the range of “sensitivity” in radiowave antennas. Each pattern offers emergent abilities for sensitivity to specific frequencies and range.

And here is where the function of natural mathematics play an important part with establishing guiding equations by which natural forces express themselves and which are tested by natural selection for “survivability”.

You are seeking an abstract aspect to Nature that binds the world lines of individuals together. So do I.
But I believe that this abstract guiding principle lies in the mathematically measurable ordering of complex patterns, based on the laws of logical expressions.

Everything is mathematically based, even science… :face_with_monocle:

To many, mathematics is the most beautiful numerical language in the universe, because it allows for incredibly precise representations and communication of natural spacetime mechanics whereas alphabetical languages have a much greater range of imaginary interpretation.

Fractal

image
Mandelbrot set at the cardioid left boundary

image
The Mandelbrot set: its boundary is a fractal curve with Hausdorff dimension 2

image
Mandelbrot set with 12 encirclements


Zooming into the boundary of the Mandelbrot set


A Sierpinski gasket can be generated by a fractal tree.


A strange attractor that exhibits multifractal scaling

This is a peek at the living mathematical mind of universe… :exploding_head:

NO. No point.
Not until you can offer the definition you’re hearing when I refer to this “Abrahamic Mindset” ?
I’ve shared my definition often enough, that I dare not repeat it.

That’s why I keep pointing to Solms and Damasio and have often shared micro imaging of the brain in action, which clearly shows traces of functional consciousness and internal communication.

You claim I say divine, but I insist it can be better studied from within the realm of biology - rather than the pretentious philosophy approach, which within it’s fibers continues resonating with ancient theological attitudes and battles.

I don’t think consciousness is any more divine than the motion of metal and magnet creating ephemeral Electricity. Experts still don’t understand it, but we manage to use it every day - and when the dynamo stops the electrical output stops.

Creature biology creates our thoughts, our consciousness. That’s the thing I’ve been repeating.

Well there’s also “magic” of the end products of all that coordinated matter. That is, these creatures living and actually getting on with their competitive lives in real world environments, with time rushing by.

That’s what I mean by my bottom up evolutionary perspective.

So what? You say:
Everything is based on math?
I prefer:
Everything can be described by math.

I’d suggest mine has less Intelligent Design implications than thine.

And you think I’m not aware of that, or haven’t given it a good deal of learning and thought myself? I been reading about Chaos and Mendalbrot since he first became a big hit in the 70s/80s.

How does that change anything about what I’m discussing?
Can you please explain that?

The reason why I am enamored with mathematics is that it exists independent of life.
Moreover I understand that the brain functions as a self-referential system, which also exists independent of life.

Which leads me to suspect that consciousness is a result of self-referential information processing and creating a field that produces a form of internal holographic imaging.

I believe that our knowledge of Alzheimer’s Disease conclusively shows that microtubule catastrophe is responsible for brain cell death and the gradual loss of ability to recall old information a nd inability to form new memories.
As memories are an integral part of self-referential information processing , it is perfectly understandable that microtubule catastrophe is fundamentally linked to consciousness and ability to think .

The exact causes of Alzheimer’s disease aren’t fully understood. But at a basic level, brain proteins fail to function as usual. This disrupts the work of brain cells, also called neurons, and triggers a series of events. The neurons become damaged and lose connections to each other. They eventually die.

Tau stabilizes microtubules by binding at the interface between tubulin heterodimers

An important microtubule-associated protein is the protein Tau, which promotes formation of axonal microtubules, stabilizes them, and drives neurite outgrowth (4, 5). The adult human brain contains six isoforms of Tau, which are generated from a single gene by alternative splicing.Jun 1, 2015
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1504081112#

How would that work?

Nothing wrong with that, that I’m aware of, as far as it goes.

Though I’ll bet I draw less conclusions from it, then some.

Self-Reference and A General Theory of Intelligence

The complexity we find in the universe is a consequence of self-referential systems. Undecidability as observed in Turing machines, formal systems, and cellular automata arises due to self-referential systems.

A self-referential system is one where the parts cannot distinguish the model of the whole from themselves even though the parts are individually not the same as the whole (collectively)

Note that in the case of the Universe , I see a theory of a “quasi-intelligent” self-referential system.
In spacetime, data being processed is not via brains (observers) and is not a result of thought but of electrochemical interaction.

Penrose was especially intrigued by the fact that all cells are self-referential with their neighbors. Cells communicate with each other via microtubules.

Another example is “quorum sensing” by bacteria and viruses, a form of chemical self-referential communication.

In living organisms , human intelligence is self-referential, but that is shaped by evolution to respond only to survival threats. Because humans use the perceived memories in our brains as the reference “library” which is mainly shaped and dedicated to survival techniques, humans only have knowledge of “our reality”.

What complexity in the universe?
Seems pretty straightforward and hemmed in by fundamental physics and chemistry.

There’s nothing I know that comes anywhere near to the complexity of simplest organic organisms out there, compared to here on Earth.

And if it does, we’ll find it on some planet, where evolution produced it within specifics and very very special conditions.

And this guy expects something different?

No observational organism/instrument, biological or manmade, is capable of knowing other realities, we are all the center of our universe.

What is that line of reasoning suggesting in the first place???

Oh please unpack that a little.

Or this for that matter:

The confusion we find when we encounter a self-referential system is that the operator is indistinguishable from the operand. That the observer is indistinguishable from the observed. This notion gives it a mystical feel, but it is incorrect.

What is he going on about, it sounds like the opposite of “self-referral”

First humans are part of the universe and are self-referential. Thus at least part of the universe is self-referential. But humans are conscious so the question remains if something must be conscious to be self-referential or if exchange of information itself can be classified as self-referential.

But apparently it goes much deeper than that and via different mechanics.

The Open Universe: Totality, Self-reference and Time

There remains an outstanding piece of this puzzle that has seen little progress, one that Roger Penrose described in his beautiful paper Singularities and Time-Asymmetry in 1979 as: “The arrow most difficult to comprehend … namely the feeling of relentless forward temporal progression, according to which potentialities seem to be transformed into actualities.”

I will propose that the insight needed to resolve the problem involves taking into account that we are part of the universe and that any attempt to model it as a totality involves self-reference. I will argue specifically that self-reference, against the background of a thermodynamic gradient, creates an instability in an embedded agent’s ability to know the future or even treat it as a potential object of knowledge.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/24740500.2022.2155200?journalCode=rapr20#

And yet another perspective:


Physicist Gregory Matloff argues that a “proto-consciousness field” could extend through all of space. NASA via Reuters

Called by its formal academic name, though, “panpsychism” turns out to have prominent supporters in a variety of fields. New York University philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers is a proponent. So too, in different ways, are neuroscientist Christof Koch of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and British physicist Sir Roger Penrose, renowned for his work on gravity and black holes. The bottom line, Matloff argues, is that panpsychism is too important to ignore.

Panpsychism

In the philosophy of mind, panpsychism (/pænˈsaɪkɪzəm/) is the view that the mind or a mindlike aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality.[1] It is also described as a theory that “the mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe.”[2]

It is one of the oldest philosophical theories, and has been ascribed to philosophers including Thales, Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, William James,[3] Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, and Galen Strawson.[1] In the 19th century, panpsychism was the default philosophy of mind in Western thought, but it saw a decline in the mid-20th century with the rise of logical positivism.[3][4]

Recent interest in the hard problem of consciousness and developments in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and quantum physics have revived interest in panpsychism in the 21st century.[4][5][6]

Panpsychism holds that mind or a mind-like aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality.[1] It is also described as a theory in which “the mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe”.[2] Panpsychists posit that the type of mentality we know through our own experience is present, in some form, in a wide range of natural bodies.[7] This notion has taken on a wide variety of forms. Some historical and non-Western panpsychists ascribe attributes such as life or spirits to all entities (animism).[8]

Contemporary academic proponents, however, hold that sentience or subjective experience is ubiquitous, while distinguishing these qualities from more complex human mental attributes.[8] They therefore ascribe a primitive form of mentality to entities at the fundamental level of physics but do not ascribe mentality to most aggregate things, such as rocks or buildings.[1][9][10]

Terminology

The philosopher David Chalmers, who has explored panpsychism as a viable theory, distinguishes between microphenomenal experiences (the experiences of microphysical entities) and macrophenomenal experiences (the experiences of larger entities, such as humans).[11]
Panpsychism - Wikipedia