neuroscience


 * NEUROSCIENCE**

In the experiment, 19 college-aged, healthy adults watched a series of digital videos of another person putting together or disassembling objects using six toy parts. In one condition, participants simply watched the activity; in another, they observed clips with the intention to be able to reproduce the actions in the correct sequential order minutes later.

Despite lying completely still during these tasks, observing with the intention to learn actions and subsequently reproduce them engages areas of the brain known to contribute to motor learning thorough actual physical practice. In particular, Frey said, the amount of activity occurring in the intraparietal sulcus -- when watching to learn accurately -- predicts how well these actions are reproduced minutes later.

Frey's group and others have previously implicated that this region is involved in organizing goal-directed manual actions. In effect, Frey said, the activity in intraparietal cortex may act as a thermometer that shows how well a person is translating what they are observing into a motor program for later performance.

"What appears vital is the intention of the observer rather than simply the visual stimulus that is being viewed," Frey said. "If the goal is to be able to do what you are seeing, then it appears that activity through your motor system is up-regulated substantially." - [|watching with intent to repeat ignites key learning area of the brain]

Gerald Edelman, BRIGHT AIR, BRILLIANT FIRE [|critical review]: by George Johnson Edelman's alternative to the computer model of the brain is something he calls neural Darwinism ... Edelman won a Nobel Prize in 1972 for establishing that the immune system works according to Darwinian principles. So why not the brain? Like the immune system, Mr. Edelman believes, the brain uses a kind of Darwinian selection to mold itself to the contours of the outside world. In this case the invader is an unfamiliar stimulus entering through the senses. Many groups of neurons respond, but some happen to be configured in a way that makes them respond more strongly than the others; they fit the stimulus better, just as some antibodies fit the antigens more closely. This resonance between signal and circuit sets off a biochemical reaction. But instead of causing the selected group of brain cells to multiply (as with the lymphocytes) the links between the neurons -- the synapses -- are strengthened. In the future, this group of neurons will react to the stimulus more strongly. In the cerebral jungles, a group of neurons can also recruit neurons from neighboring tribes. Alliances of neurons are constantly forming and shifting boundaries, providing an ever-changing population of neuronal groups available for selection. Not all of this is new. It is generally accepted that memories are made when information from the senses sets off biochemical reactions that strengthen the connections between neurons, fine-tuning the circuitry we use to interpret the world. The difference with Mr. Edelman's theory is that, as he sees it, no information actually passes from the environment to the brain, any more than information from the environment can be said to pass directly into an animal's genome; the environment simply selects from a random population those creatures best suited to survive. That, I think, is what he means when he says the brain is not an information processor. ...

//Johnson goes onto criticise Edelman for setting up a straw man//, --> "a crisis for those who believe that the nervous system is precise and 'hard-wired' like a computer." There's the problem. Nobody really believes that

Eric Kandel, (2007): [|In Search of Memory - The Emergence of a New Science of Mind]//.// WW Norton & Company, New York

I have ordered this book, it has fabulous reader reviews at amazon, eg [|emil's review] is informative and full of praise