🚀 go-pugleaf

x011@ns1.CC.Lehigh.EDU wrote:

: Back to Gestalt nets.
: Miracle berries native to West Africa make a protein called miraculin
: which according to Bartoshuk, et al (1974) makes acids tastes very sweet
: after the taste system has been exposed to miraculin.  Linda Bartoshuk
: reported that her group developed ulcers from drinking vinegar from the
: acid.  The vinegar tasted extremely sweet to them.

: Using a gestalt pattern and correlational opponent-process as an explaination
: the miraculin which is practically tasteless might produce neural wavelet
: patterns that are unnoticed in the brain.  This would produce opponent
: memory reverberating wavelets.  When the new stimulus of acid is added
: to the miraculin wavelet it causes a frequency modulation that is read as
: very sweet.  This would be like phi phenomenon and the gestalt of 
: perception. 

Taste cells go through the thalamus and respond very grossly. Fine
distinctions are olfactory, but, yes, sweetness and acid are things
detected by taste. It sounds like miraculin binds to the 'sweetness'
receptors and changes their response. Long-term memories can be formed
without the higher cognitive centers being aware of the sensory stimuli,
but that involves strong inhibition of the primary cells involved at the
next stage of processing. I don't think that can happen here. In
particular, I don't think you cannot form a neural cellular array (the
basis of gestalt) for a cognitively significant memory without the somas
of the cells in the array spiking, and the basal nuclei getting involved
to turn the gain up to get a lot of cells involved. That's the essence of
attention, and wouldn't happen for an unnoticed stimulus. It might
eventually be a forgotten stimulus, but that's because cognitive memory
degrades with time (unlike behavioral memory) unless it's rehearsed. That
didn't happen here. It sounds like a molecule binding permanently to taste
receptors. 

: When odors are presented as a stimulus can a gestalt pattern which is
: not a simple addition of the odors result in simular phenomenon?

: Ron Blue


--
Harry Erwin
Internet: herwin@gmu.edu