‘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?