Thursday - June 30, 2005

The Crack Down The Middle

It turns out OldCatMan was right in his “no LEFT or RIGHT, just a CRACK DOWN THE MIDDLE” observation. Cornell University scientists have determined that the human brain does not work in a sequential “1’s and 0’s” mode like a computer does but has its own method which involves parallel processing in several gray zones at once ....

“For decades, the cognitive and neural sciences have treated mental processes as though they involved passing discrete packets of information in a strictly feed-forward fashion from one cognitive module to the next or in a string of individuated binary symbols—like a digital computer,” said Spivey. “More recently, however, a growing number of studies, such as ours, support dynamical-systems approaches to the mind. In this model, perception and cognition are mathematically described as a continuous trajectory through a high-dimensional mental space; the neural activation patterns flow back and forth to produce nonlinear, self-organized, emergent properties—like a biological organism.”

The computer metaphor describes cognition as being in a particular discrete state, for example, “on or off” or in values of either zero or one, and in a static state until moving on. If there was ambiguity, the model assumed that the mind jumps the gun to one state or the other, and if it realizes it is wrong, it then makes a correction.

“In thinking of cognition as working as a biological organism does, on the other hand, you do not have to be in one state or another like a computer, but can have values in between—you can be partially in one state and another, and then eventually gravitate to a unique interpretation, as in finally recognizing a spoken word,” Spivey said.

Posted by The Skipper     on 06/30/2005 at 10:02 AM   
Filed Under: • Science-Technology •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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