Tag Archives: brain function
29 Aug Black Boxes: Specialized Areas of the Brain
The Black Box Black Box is a term used to describe a mechanical device that does something inside, but whose functions are not visible from the outside. Specialized areas of the brain may operate as black boxes. Activation flows in and activation flows out, and what happens inside may have no direct affect on other […]
28 Aug Sensory Input to the Brain
Part of the definition of any computer program is defining the inputs and outputs, where they come from, what they are and where they get processed. Fortunately, we know enough about the brain to answer many of these questions, thus we have a basis for defining artificial models that, in some way, mimic these elements of […]
27 Aug Brain Correlation Processes
Many computer systems focus on a single capability, one task or just one dimension of a complex process. Sentient brain activity is an example of a complex process with many dimensions. Optical character recognition, such as identifying a capital “Q” on a piece of paper, is an example of a problem with three dimensions: Length, […]
24 Aug Coordinating Neural Pathways
Specialization & Cross-Over A great deal of functional specialization and cross-over is evidenced in the brief summary in the table on functional morphology and descriptions of the areas of the brain covered in my last post. In fact, the extent to which many areas specialize is understood in minute detail, even to the functional segregation […]
23 Aug Specialized Instruments – Brain Areas
Finding Functions on a Map Much of what we know about the functions of areas of the brain was discovered by Korbinian Brodmann in the early 1900s. He mapped the brain by sticking in many electrodes, eliciting cognitive responses such as making a sound or showing an image to trigger perception, and monitoring electrical activity. Now, […]
20 Aug Two Rights and a Village: Social Communication
To Win a Point When we communicate, we often use persuasive language and/or logic to win a point. This happens all the time in political campaigns. As an example, the conservative presidential campaign recently took umbrage when the liberal incumbent stated that successful entrepreneurs need a community of people to succeed. The conservatives felt that […]
17 Aug Stimuli
Responses to Stimuli When we speak of computational systems, we use words like “input” and “output” and “program“. When computers become able to communicate, understand and process knowledge in context, will we use different words: words that are more anthropomorphic? I’ve been playing with anthropomorphic concepts with MIPUS. In today’s post I will draw us […]
09 Aug Emotional Intelligence
What Does it Take to Think In describing the role of the hippocampus, we discussed the correlation of various sensory inputs to form a cohesive picture of our physical surroundings. The direct links between the amygdala and the central gray matter demonstrate the importance of emotional feedback or emotional intelligence in cognitive processes. Dr. Travis […]
06 Aug Finding yourself in the Hippocampus
On October 6, 2014, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet awarded The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or medicine to John O´Keefe and to May‐Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain. John O´Keefe is Director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre in Neural Circuits […]
01 Aug Section 6 Intro – Language and Dialog
Dialog: Is this something limited to humans – to sentient beings? Natural Language, its components, acquisition, and use are the subjects of this sixth section of the Understanding Context blog. Here, you will find theories about communication and cognition, along with descriptions of computational approaches to analyzing and automatically generating human language and dialog using computers. […]