A distinctive arrangement that comprises a part of the overall pattern. Not just of pictures or sensory data, also of sequences and regularities
A long, thin dark shape is a feature that might be a snake. Our reaction may be jump back immediately. That is a reaction deeper than a cortical decision. It comes from the limbic system’s thalamus preliminary analysis. With additional time, the cortex may decide that the shape is actually a branch and we relax.
Fidelity
The degree of exactness with which something is copied or reproduced
Fidelity is the percentage of the input signal that is necessary to cause the threshold to fire. Fidelity is a measure of the maximum commonality that the threshold will communicate.
fMRI. functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Neuroimaging technique used in biomedical research and in diagnosis that detects changes in blood flow in the brain. This technique compares brain activity under resting and activated conditions. It combines the high-spatial-resolution noninvasive imaging of brain anatomy offered by standard magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with a strategy to distinguish between the magnetic resonance states of hemoglobin in the presence or absence of oxygen.
fMRI impressive resolution of 1 mm still means that hundreds of thousands of neurons with millions of interconnections are summarized in its image.
Folk Psychology
Ways of conceptualizing mind and the mental that are implicit in ordinary, everyday attributions of mental states to oneself and others. Philosophers have adopted different positions about the extent to which folk psychology and its generalizations (e.g., those portraying human actions as governed by intention) are supported by the findings of scientific psychology. Some consider it indispensible to understanding human conduct. Others (e.g., “eliminative materialists”) think that it can and perhaps will be replaced by scientific psychology.
Perspective embedded in commonly used terms of language. Wants, drives, needs, free will explain conscious decisions. For example, “voluntary muscles” implies free will.
Fundamental Attribution Error
Your mistakes are caused by the situation. Other people’s mistakes are caused by their personality traits.
Assume other’s behavior is due to innate disposition, ignoring situation that may be causing it. Road rage. For those who think that IQ is everything (I’m a Mensa member), fundamental attribution error is one of many traits of the human brain, which is not measured in IQ tests.
GABA. gamma amino butyric acid
The brain’s main inhibitory transmitter. Activated by pyramidal cells and cause inhibition of other pyramidal cells located at a distance. With excitatory neurons support the center-surround structure. Most purkinje cells (in the cerebellum, not the cortex) release GABA. relaxation chemical in casual language+E84
The onset of the critical period is associated with relatively higher levels of GABA. Also Fields (p 154) calls GABA athe brake on arousal.
Gestalt
A structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts. Emphasizes that the whole of anything is greater than its parts. Overdone, but explains some emergent properties
Organization of perception elements is by proximity, similarity, continuity, closure, and symmetry (strikingly reminescent of self-organized maps). Gestalt explains some emergent qualities – for instance, the brain converts 15 images/sec into smooth motion.
Glutamate
A salt or ester of levorotatory glutamic acid that functions as an excitatory neurotransmitter.
Beyond its role in neural signal processing, Fields (p 154) contrasts it with GABA, calling glutamate the accelerator for arousal.
Goals
The end toward which effort is directed. Basic drivers are Satisfaction, Sex, and Safety. Manifest goals – Where you live, what you do as work, how you relate to potential partners.
There are 2 parts to one’s goals. First are the 3S Imperatives from the brainstem and limbic system – safety, satisfaction, sex. Second are the particular ways your genetic complement and perssonal experience shape your 3S’s through goals and personality into behaviors.
Gray Matter
Neural tissue esp. of the brain and spinal cord that contains nerve-cell bodies as well as nerve fibers and has a brownish-gray color. Unmyelinated neurons. Sites of processing in brain
Gray, non-myelinated neurons are where active integration of signals take place. Up to the critical period that is where rapid learning places inputs into categories and after the critical period, when inputs are placed into learned categories.
Gyrus
A protuberance on the surface of the brain. The precentral gyrus (in front of the central sulcus) is the site of the primary motor map.
The postcentral gyrus (behind, closer to the back of the head, relative to the central sulcus) is the site of the primary touch and bodily sensation map.
Habit
A behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition or physiologic exposure that shows itself in regularity or increased facility of performance. An acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary.
Habits are mainly stored in the putamen, a non-cortical limbic structure. In computer science terms, the behavior has become a subroutine that only needs to be invoked by cortical processing. Once invoked, very limited attention is paid to the behavior.
Haptic register
Short-term retention of tactile impressions for continuity processing
Hebb’s Learning Law
Hebb’s rule is a postulate proposed by Donald Hebb in 1949. It is a learning rule that describes how the neuronal activities influence the connection between neurons, i.e., the synaptic plasticity. It provides an algorithm to update the weight of synaptic connections within neural network. Learning specifically involves strengthening certain patterns of neural activity by increasing the probability (weight, efficiency) of induced neuron firing between the associated connections.
Cells that fire together wire together. When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A’s efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.
Hemisphere, Dominant
The frontal lobe, which lies rostral to the central sulcus, is involved with many of the components of intelligence (foresight, planning, and comprehension), with mood, with motor activity on the opposite side of the body, and (in the case of the dominant hemisphere) with speech production.
Involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by Experimental and esp. trial-and-error methods. of or relating to exploratory problem-solving techniques that utilize self-educating techniques (as the evaluation of feedback) to improve performance. Mental shortcuts-informal, intuitive, speculative strategies that sometimes lead to effective solutions
For Mental Construction heuristics are essential because people lack full information, perfect knowledge, infinite working memory, and sufficient time before some reactions must be made. Here’s an interesting heuristic where the goal is get to Pierpont Museum in NYC. Drive towards visible Empire State Bldg tower. That will get you close, but nearby other buildings hide the Empire State Building, Final guidance is needed.
Hidden Layers
Hidden layers are the artificial neural network term for these layers. It connotes an ineffability relating to these layers operations.
Almost all the layers in the 100-Step Rule are below consciousness and outside of external reality. Only raw sensory input and conscious decision-making steps are available for contemplation.
Hippocampus
A curved elongated ridge ( 4 cm long, 1 cm wide) that extends over the floor of the descending horn of each lateral ventricle of the brain, that consists of gray matter covered on the ventricular surface with white matter, and that is involved in forming, storing, and processing memory. Part of cerebral cortex, but only 1,2, or 3 levels of cells in the pyramid versus 6 in the cerebral cortex.
Memory formation, spatial awareness, and recall. It is essential for learning and long-term memory. All birds, reptiles and fish have a hippocampus-like structure.
Homeostasis
A relatively stable state of equilibrium or a tendency toward such a state between the different but interdependent elements or groups of elements of an organism, population, or groupelements, especially as maintained by physiological processes.
Homeostasis provides the physiological underpinings of the emotional satisfaction value of situations. The Satiety component of the 3S Imperatives.
Homunculus
Penfield’s cortical homunculus. The mapping of our body within our brain.
SOMs (self-organizing maps) remove some urgency from the criticism that an internal entity is needed to perform operations for consciousness. The distinct and discredited idea of a little person (homunculus) listening and acting on sensory input is not being invoked here.
Hypothalamus
A basal part of the diencephalon that lies beneath the thalamus on each side, forms the floor of the third ventricle, and includes vital autonomic regulatory centers.
Integrates the brain and the endocrine system, across all mammals. Maintains homeostasis and expression of emotions.
Induction
Inference of a generalized conclusion from particular instances. A conclusion arrive at in this manner. Method of reasoning from a part to a whole, from particulars to generals, or from the individual to the universal. 1. Inexact matching/categorization possible; missing data does not forbid categorization. 2. Inference of a generalized conclusion from particular instances. Induction can generates new premises; however they can be wrong
Almost Gate leads to abstraction which categorizes. Particular instances get grouped together. This occurs from raw sense data through intermediate merging with memories and with desires onto final behavioral options. That final step is a generalized conclusion.
Instinct
A largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason. (most typical, fight-or-flight) – quick reaction to stimulus, brain stem up to amygdala to hypothalamus thence to pituitary. Emotional reaction, stimulus threatens safety. More broadly stimulus weighed against in-place desires (to satiate hunger, sex, safety)
A general internal state (hunger) causes a general response. Internal state (homeostasis) goes through the lower brain which prompts higher level mental activity to identify potential behaviors that will restore homeostasis. Below level of conscious effort or mental awareness.
Internal Worldview
Metastable understanding of the world we have come to, upon which we make decisions that result on actions or behaviors
The power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference. Very similar to creativity. The ability to form a conclusion before sufficient evidence is available to completely, deductively prove the conclusion
The intuition is formed by pattern analysis and is not a guaranteed conclusion, but a feeling that the conclusion will later be shown to be true.
Kohonen network
Artificial neural network which spontaneously (without supervision) creates feature maps upon repeated receipt of external stimuli.
Demonstrates that feasibility that the human brain could use a similar scheme to learn and organize information
Bowers, K.S., Regher G., Balthazard, C. & Parker, K. (1990). Intuition in the context of discovery. Cognitive Psychology, 22, 72-110.
Klein, Gary. The Power of Intuition. How To Use Your Gut Feelings To Make Better Decisions At Work. Doubleday Press. 2004. Kindle. eISBN: 978-0-307-42404-4
In general, each person has an idiosyncratic neural threshold. That is Almost Gates require different numbers of triggering inputs to fire.
A person with a high Almost Gate requires a close match (more similarities) between a new stimulus and a learned category to see a match. Their outlook is quite literal. Fewer categories are associated with the bar for matching so high. An extreme case would be a person who demands that the cover image of “rose petals” for a woman’s biking blog be explained. The metaphor makes no sense to him.
Contrary-wise, those with a low Almost Gate see associations between many, many things. That can be useful because they have more premises to draw conclusions upon; unfortunately, it also causes them often overlook differences that turn out to be significant.
Baddeley, Alan. Your Memory: A User’s Guide. Firefly Books, Buffalo, NY, 2004. Print. ISBN 1-55297-985-7
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the theory that an individual’s thoughts and actions are determined by the language or languages that individual speaks.
The strong version of the hypothesis states that all human thoughts and actions are bound by the restraints of language, and is generally less accepted than the weak version.
The weak version says that language only somewhat shapes our thinking and behavior.
Instead of considering linguistic relativism as limiting the possibilities of thought, a more productive perspective is that language organizes experience in a manner which has yielded useful thoughts and behaviors over the language’s lifespan.
“Some believe their success is based on innate ability; these are said to have a “fixed” theory of intelligence (fixed mindset). Others, who believe their success is based on hard work, learning, training and doggedness are said to have a “growth” or an “incremental” theory of intelligence (growth mindset).
Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Ballantine Books, Penguin Random House, New York, 2016. Print. 978-0-345-47232-8
A message box with a footnote
Spitzer, Manfred. The Mind Within the Net. Models of Learning, Thinking, and Acting. The MIT Press, 1999. Print. ISBN 0-262-69236-8
I have removed that complication in the discussion, because it does not alter the fundamental idea. Any set of input which exceeds the neuron’s threshold is treated the same thereafter. The Almost Gate is operational.
The mathematical proof technique called “mathematical induction” is deductive and not inductive. Proofs that make use of mathematical induction typically take the following form:
Property P is true of the natural number 0.
For all natural numbers n, if P holds of n then P also holds of n + 1.
Therefore, P is true of all natural numbers.
When such a proof is given by a mathematician, and when all the premises are true, then the conclusion follows necessarily. Therefore, such an inductive argument is deductive. It is deductively sound, too.
Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that is responsible for temporarily holding information available for processing. Working memory is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and behavior. Working memory is often used synonymously with short-term memory, but some theorists consider the two forms of memory distinct, assuming that working memory allows for the manipulation of stored information, whereas short-term memory only refers to the short-term storage of information
James, William. The Principles of Psychology. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc and Henry Holt and Company, Inc.1952. Print. ISBN 0-85229-163-9
Memory is not a photograph of external reality stored in the brain, but a reconstruction based on observed event, personal emotional impact, and learned relationships.
Consider the Almost Gates that the current situational features go through. Our remembered situations also go through the same path. When there is sufficient matching of results (neural thresholds are surmounted), the situations fit in the same abstract category. Other features of the situations may or may not be comparable.
Carter, Rita. The Human Brain Book: An Illustrated Guide to its Structure, Function, and Disorders. DK. London, New York, Melbourne, Munich, Delhi, 2009. Print with DVD. ISBN 978-0-7566-5441-2
The current situation, remembered situations, and 3S imperatives – in their manifestations as emotions, personality traits, goals, desires, and fears – feed into neurons whose outputs lead ultimately to different actions.
The neuron whose Almost Gate is surmounted triggers its action chain. With so many neural inputs streaming from various sources, it’s unsurprising that typically our 3S imperatives are not completely satisfied by our response.
“… the cortex works as a rule-extraction machine and produces maps of input according to the principles of frequency and simularity.” Spitzer (p 138).
Spitzer, Manfred. The Mind Within the Net. Models of Learning, Thinking, and Acting. The MIT Press, 1999. Print. ISBN 0-262-69236-8
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, A Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource, ISSN 2161-0002, http://www.iep.utm.edu/, Dec. 13, 2017.
Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct. Harper Collins Perennial Modern Classics, NY, NY, 2007, original William Morrow Company, 1994. Print. ISBN 978-0-133646-1
Garlick, Dennis. Intelligence and the Brain: Solving the Mystery of Why People Differ in IQ and How a Child Can Be a Genius. Aesop Press, Burbank, California, 2010. Print. ISBN 0-615-31921-1.
Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Print. ISBN 978-0-374-53355-7
Klingberg, Torkel. The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory. 2009. Print. ISBN 9780195372885
Stanovich, Keith E. What Intelligence Tests Miss: the psychology of rational thought. Yale University Press, 2009. Print. ISBN 978-0-300-12385-2
Hofstadter, Douglas and Sander, Emmanuel. Essences and Surfaces: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking. Basic Books, Perseus Books Group, New York, 2013. Print. ISBN 978-0-465-01847-5
Bayes’ theorem describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event. For example, if cancer is related to age, then, using Bayes’ theorem, a person’s age can be used to more accurately assess the probability that they have cancer, compared to the assessment of the probability of cancer made without knowledge of the person’s age.
Martindale, Colin. “Biological Bases of Creativity” in Handbook of Creativity. Edited by Robert J. Sternberg. Cambridge University Press, 1999. Print. ISBN 0 521 57604 0
Hadamard, Jacques. An Essay on the Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. Dover Publications, NY, NY, 1954. Print. ISBN 0-486-20107-4
Fields, R. Douglas. The Other Brain: From Dementia to Schizophrenia. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2009. Print. ISBN 978-0-7432-9141-5.
Kalat, James W. Biological Psychology, 8th Edition. Thomson Wadsworth, 2004. Print. ISBN 0-534-58836-6
Klawans, Harold, M.D. Strange Behavior. Tales of Evolutionary Neurology. W.W Norton & Company, NY, NY, 2000. Print. ISBN 0-393-32184-3
Caudill, Maureen and Butler, Charles. Understanding Neural Networks. A Bradford Book, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, 1992. Print.
[M]emory is not entirely faithful. When you perceive an object, groups of neurons in different parts of your brain process the information about its shape, colour, smell, sound, and so on. Your brain then draws connections among these different groups of neurons, and these relationships constitute your perception of the object. Subsequently, whenever you want to remember the object, you must reconstruct these relationships. The parallel processing that your cortex does for this purpose, however, can alter your memory of the object. McGill Memory and Learning
Zeman, Adam. A Portrait on the Brain. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008. Print. ISBN 978-0-300-11416-4.
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ET Jaynes, 2003 (p133). Jaynes, E. and Bretthorst, G. (2003). Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge
