🚀 go-pugleaf

Andrzej Pindor (pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca) wrote:
: In article <35s56r$t3t@portal.gmu.edu>,
: HARRY R. ERWIN <herwin@mason1.gmu.edu> wrote:
: >What is consciousness? What is the mind? KIBO questions. Let me lay out 
: >some ideas, though.
: >.......
: >Hence, objects of interest to the organism are dual to these (continuously
: >varying) patterns of more-or-less coherent dynamics in the brain--the
: >mind.  Note that these patterns are fundamentally semantic, 

: Could you explain what you mean by "fundamentally semantic" as opposed
: to (merely) "syntactic"?

1. Non-symbolic, since these patterns are part of a spatially distributed,
continuously varying voltage level function (and are thus uncountable). 
Coherence then occurs when this function is sufficiently similar in
related regions that a non-linear amplification process is triggered and
entrains the voltage levels in nearby neurons into the pattern. 

2. Fundamentally semantic, since these patterns usually are the result of
integration of the continuous data field generated by external objects
(and expressed as an activation of apical dendrites of primary neurons)
against a measure defined by a continuous expectation field generated
internally (and expressed in several connected processes: direct
modulation of the activation levels of basal dendrites, generalized
modulation of synaptic efficacy by centripetal interneurons, and
longer-term hebbian learning at NMDA synapses). In other words, the images
of internal objects are generally (not always) dual to external objects
and so evolve and behave dually to the evolution/behavior of the external
objects.  Attention processes can (1) ignore these object images, (2) mark
them as generically expected, or (3) select them specifically for further
processing. Desimone's lab at NIMH has some recent results of interest on
this. 

--
Harry Erwin
Internet: herwin@gmu.edu 
Just a dumb graduate student working on Katchalsky network models....
(And if you believe that, I have a ranch in California to sell you.)