Selfish Meme

One of our most fundamental notions is our concept of self. Somehow the billions of neurons and trillions of synapses synthesize a "self" out of their connections and operations. For neuroscience this presents a difficult challenge: how do the many systems and subsystems of the brain cooperate to produce a unified concept of self? I don't know the answer, and I'm pretty sure neuroscientists don't either, but I have an analogy.

Internet computer games like Altitude need to seamlessly integrate the worlds of multiple players scattered all over the world. Each player has a copy of the "world" of the game, complete with terrain, other players, projectiles the players are firing at each other. Each player is controlling an aircraft and constantly inputting commands to speed up, slow down, fire projectiles, etc. The "worlds" are not exactly the same, since each player has a priviledged position on his own game map, but the game would fall apart if the various players worlds failed to maintain consistency. That consistency is maintained by a steady stream of messages updating each players map in response to every game event.

Our brains must do something similar when we integrate sounds, smells, and visual information with memory to construct a model of our world. These models too are constantly updated. Sometimes the two distant headlights are a truck and sometimes they are two motorcycles. Sometimes tha flashing lights behind you are a policeman and sometimes they turn out to be an alien spaceship.

Identifying an unfamiliar object by touch is a good test case. While in a cluttered environment, close your eyes and start grabbing things. Most, I found, could be identified nearly instantly - not too surprising considering that I'm in my computer room. The less familiar the environment and the objects, the more difficult the task becomes. The kinds of information we need to integrate are pretty various: size, shape, texture, relative location, whether the object is easily moved or not, its resistance to pressure.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec...
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st...
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more