Lee Kent Hempfling Logic Matters

With all due respect to Dr. David Eagleman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Eagleman .) His piece written Jul 30, 2007, entitled “10 Unsolved Mysteries Of The Brain: What we know — and don’t know — about how we think;” was revised May 12,2023 and posted today, which happens to be November 29, 2023.  I have been following this kind man on Facebook for some time and was relieved when I saw him post the article published at https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/10-unsolved-mysteries-of-the-brain .

This piece will quote heavily from his as he has a nice way of conveying his meaning. This is in no way a refutation of his work or opinions, or that of any other person for that matter. It has no bearing on anything other than the topic at hand. So.. what are the 10  Unsolved Mysteries Of The Brain according to Dr. Eagleman?

1. How is information coded in neural activity?

2. How are memories stored and retrieved?

3. What does the baseline activity in the brain represent?

4. How do brains simulate the future?

5. What are emotions?

6. What is intelligence?

7. How is time represented in the brain?

8. Why do brains sleep and dream?

9. How do the specialized systems of the brain integrate with one another?

10. What is consciousness?

This project is not at all interested in what something looks like. This is entirely about the meal. How it is made, what the parts do and what the results are. If you are looking for a description let’s rest on Dr. Eagleman: in fact, all quotes are from him and the paper this addresses except the Rabbi above that is from a Facebook group. Not all of the paper is quoted. Only those parts that lend understanding.

“Of all the objects in the universe, the human brain is the most complex: There are as many neurons in the brain as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. So it is no surprise that, ­despite the glow from recent advances in the science of the brain and mind, we still find ourselves squinting in the dark somewhat. But we are at least beginning to grasp the crucial mysteries of neuroscience and starting to make headway in addressing them. Even partial answers to these 10 questions could restructure our understanding of the roughly three-pound mass of gray and white matter that defines who we are.”

That is not what this is. Neither should it be what any study is. That is a description of what something is. A lot of neurons.  Yes, knowing how it works will restructure everything. Knowing how everything works equally applies.

1. How is information coded in neural activity?

“Neurons, the specialized cells of the brain, can produce brief spikes of voltage in their outer membranes. These electrical pulses travel along specialized extensions called axons to cause the release of chemical signals elsewhere in the brain. The binary, all-or-nothing spikes appear to carry information about the world: What do I see? Am I hungry? Which way should I turn? But what is the code of these millisecond bits of voltage? Spikes may mean different things at different places and times in the brain. In parts of the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord), the rate of spiking often correlates with clearly definable external features, like the presence of a color or a face. In the peripheral nervous system, more spikes indicates more heat, a louder sound, or a stronger muscle contraction.”

All inputs are converted to the same process and share a great deal of the process with similar inputs separated by biological clock pulses. The exact description with pretty amateur pictures (not crayon) is contained in the book The Brain Is A Wonderful Thing. There is no ‘code’. There is only amplitude. What you see as an electrical pulse is indeed there but inside of it is what is being processed by the neuron. Synapses are biological diodes. Neurons perform a simple calculation of two signals to  output one. See The Equation for the Human Brain on this website. The pulse affects the pilot signal. That pilot signal is within the neuron, shot across the axon and converted by chemical variations back across the synapse to be processed by another neuron.

2. How are memories stored and retrieved?

“When you learn a new fact, like someone’s name, there are physical changes in the structure of your brain. But we don’t yet comprehend exactly what those changes are, how they are orchestrated across vast seas of synapses and neurons, how they embody knowledge, or how they are read out decades later for retrieval.”

It is not surprising this is explained this way. Data is assumed to be ‘stored’ when not in use. But nothing is ‘stored’ in the brain. There are no ‘static’ retriveable locations of data that looks like data human brains created.  New neurons are created when new comparisons are made that extend the pathway being processed. That does indeed change structure but it is not a contractor job. Neurons also are removed and absorbed when pathways are not being maintained.  Memory is a collective parallel process that emerges by repetition of similars. Again see  The Brain Is A Wonderful Thing.

3. What does the baseline activity in the brain represent?

“Neuroscientists have mostly studied changes in brain activity that correlate with stimuli we can present in the laboratory, such as a picture, a touch, or a sound. But the activity of the brain at rest — its “baseline” activity — may prove to be the most important aspect of our mental lives. The awake, resting brain uses 20 percent of the body’s total oxygen, even though it makes up only 2 percent of the body’s mass. Some of the baseline activity may represent the brain restructuring knowledge in the background, simulating future states and events, or manipulating memories. Most things we care about — reminiscences, emotions, drives, plans, and so on — can occur with no external stimulus and no overt output that can be measured.”

Don’t mix what you see with what this is! Baseline is a frequency of the pilot that is used in every neuron calculation. The base of humans runs somewhere between and around 35,721hz and 36006hz. I’ve called it Neutricity even though that was used before somewhere it doesn’t matter: this does. The biological clock is controlled by that base frequency. Everything that comes from it, all divisions to increase ratio calculations are connected. Slow that clock and you will be sick as well as confused. Shut that clock off and your body will no longer be host to you. IOW you will be dead.

4. How do brains simulate the future?

“When a fire chief encounters a new blaze, he quickly makes predictions about how to best position his men. Running such simulations of the future — without the risk and expense of actually attempting them — allows “our hypotheses to die in our stead,” as philosopher Karl Popper put it. For this reason, the emulation of possible futures is one of the key businesses that intelligent brains invest in.”

This is out of order. One needs to understand what the structure of the brain is. In a short version: Long term is your history. Supported by repetition and memory. Short term is you. Now. It is only 7 seconds long but takes up nearly the entire skull. Mid term is the mixture of long and short term. It is sent to long term so you remember you and to motion if the pathways have been supported. Ratio enhancement is the key to intellect. What is faster coming out than what it has going in. 30:1 long term. 900:1 short to long term, 10:1 reduction to motion. Detailed in the book The Brain Is A Wonderful Thing. The path to looking forward, is based in the definition of intelligence. See below.

5. What are emotions?

“We often talk about brains as information-processing systems, but any account of the brain that lacks an account of emotions, motivations, fears, and hopes is incomplete. Emotions are measurable physical responses to salient stimuli: the increased heartbeat and perspiration that accompany fear, the freezing response of a rat in the presence of a cat, or the extra muscle tension that accompanies anger. Feelings, on the other hand, are the subjective experiences that sometimes accompany these processes: the sensations of happiness, envy, sadness, and so on. Emotions seem to employ largely unconscious machinery — for example, brain areas involved in emotion will respond to angry faces that are briefly presented and then rapidly masked, even when subjects are unaware of having seen the face. Across cultures the expression of basic emotions is remarkably similar, and as Darwin observed, it is also similar across all mammals. There are even strong similarities in physiological responses among humans, reptiles, and birds when showing fear, anger, or parental love.”

See: …  there is a perfect example of the menu becoming the meal. Talking about emotions is all about emotions. No it isn’t. It is about what causes emotions. What an emotion is. Simply put: an emotion is output from long term memory that is not motion. Short term is the brake to apply to not be controlled by long term emotional output. The solution to all mental conditions not medically caused is greater short term self awareness. It stops emotional outbursts. It is the solution to humans not killing the species off through bigoted ignorance.  It is an acquired trait available only to humans and today pretty much wasted.

6. What is intelligence?

“Intelligence comes in many forms, but it is not known what intelligence — in any of its guises — means biologically. How do billions of neurons work together to manipulate knowledge, simulate novel situations, and erase inconsequential information? What happens when two concepts “fit” together and you suddenly see a solution to a problem? What happens in your brain when it suddenly dawns on you that the killer in the movie is actually the unsuspected wife? Do intelligent people store knowledge in a way that is more distilled, more varied, or more easily retrievable?”

Intelligence is the degree of advancement short term has over long term. In other words: the greater the evaluation the better the clarity. Perhaps this one: the greater the pixel count the better the picture.  If you care to test that in an intelligence test this site offers one programmed in the same algorithm of the brain. See here.   Follow the instructions or you will be wasting your time. Half a score is not the score. And it is exactly dead on.

7. How is time represented in the brain?

“Hundred-yard dashes begin with a gunshot rather than a strobe light because your brain can react more quickly to a bang than to a flash. Yet as soon as we get outside the realm of motor reactions and into the realm of perception (what you report that you saw and heard), the story changes. When it comes to awareness, the brain goes through a good deal of trouble to synchronize incoming signals that are processed at very different speeds.”

This is the culprit everyone has. Every thing with a brain has. Every calculation performed by a neuron causes the resulting value to be less amplitude than the memory it was calculated against. That means each time a bio clock pulse matches two pathways and outputs a new signal it is smaller. That smaller gives the elusion of time’s past is fainter and since there is a past there must be a future so. No. Time is a figment of your brain’s processing. As long as that bioclock is pushing pulses time fades into the past. But time as a measurement is quite real. It measures duration. And that is all.

8. Why do brains sleep and dream?

“One of the most astonishing aspects of our lives is that we spend a third of our time in the strange world of sleep. Newborn babies spend about twice that. It is inordinately difficult to remain awake for more than a full day-night cycle. In humans, continuous wakefulness of the nervous system results in mental derangement; rats deprived of sleep for 10 days die. All mammals sleep, reptiles and birds sleep, and voluntary breathers like dolphins sleep with one brain hemisphere dormant at a time. The evolutionary trend is clear, but the function of sleep is not.”

As brain processing takes place the electrical carrier seen as pulsing in neurons wears down. Sleep is what gives the brain a recharge. Food helps too. We noticed this in Little Ricci during field trials. Leaving the robot turned on let the Neutronics battery recharge. No effect was felt in the electrical motor battery.

9. How do the specialized systems of the brain integrate with one another?

“To the naked eye, no part of the brain’s surface looks terribly different from any other part. But when we measure activity, we find that different types of information lurk in each region of the neural territory. Within vision, for example, separate areas process motion, edges, faces, and colors. The territory of the adult brain is as fractured as a map of the countries of the world.”

No they do not. There are no edge and face and color processes. It is all the same. That is how it integrates into one system. A system that is greated than the sum of its parts as the system creates more than it takes in., Neurons are shared by many different clock pulse pathways. When that pathway’s clock pulse trigger is reached it fires after calculating the memory amplitutde against the base frequency. Areas of the brain are more or less dedicated to specific input types. Eye rods and cones, in one area, hair follicles in the ears. All processed in the same method and manner using the same frequency system. That happens with the inputs. Since vision was considered: take one rod or cone. It reacts to the light resting upon it and transfers that interaction into a amplitude variation  of the pilot Neutronics signal using the same algorithm. Different inputs all convert signal amplitudes in the same system.

10. What is consciousness?

“Think back to your first kiss. The experience of it may pop into your head instantly. Where was that memory before you became conscious of it? How was it stored in your brain before and after it came into consciousness? What is the difference between those states?”

Memory is not stored. Computers and pack rats store things. The brain is alive. Everything in it is constantly moving. Thousands of similar inputs input a sequence cast in the bioclock’s ratio enhanced pulses, sharing a network of interconnected neurons all with singnals being kept in one direction by synapses. Recall is made when input, whether external or internal short term, is compared to long term and matches are made increasing the memory amplitude of the event and allowing its rise to recall. It works the other way too.

There is a difference between consciousness and conscious.  Conscious is being awake, not asleep or rendered non-participatory.  Consiousness is the collected memory in long term that is created by a short term loop. Seven seconds long running at a 900 to 1 ratio against long term memory. that is where ‘you’ reside. ‘You’ are the collected emerging entity created by the connectivity of the brain. You reside in a body that hopefully will keep the brain working until its time to not., Consciousness is knowing that you know that you know. And saved to long term memory so you’ll continue to know that you know that you know. If you don’t know that you know that you know and only know that you know, there’s the root of every issue you experience created by you. Increase self awareness. This site has a myriad collection of ways to do that.

That’s a different topic.

There are many topics not in these questions. The dominate sense: whether a person is primarily a visual thinker, or primarily an aural thinker. It matters a great deal. And the big one. The degree to which short term is more in control over output both externally and internally than longterm reactionary recall. That one is solvable and once solved so will the human experience reduce its level of emotional pain. We’ll leave those for the books.

“The mechanisms underlying consciousness could reside at any of a variety of physical levels: molecular, cellular, circuit, pathway, or some organizational level not yet described. The mechanisms might also be a product of interactions between these levels. One compelling but still speculative notion is that the massive feedback circuitry of the brain is essential to the production of consciousness.

In the near term, scientists are working to identify the areas of the brain that correlate with consciousness. Then comes the next step: understanding why they correlate. This is the so-called hard problem of neuroscience, and it lies at the outer limit of what material explanations will say about the experience of being human.”

The organizational is described above and resources provided to learn more. Get over the menu. Just modern day dumbed down goal Artificial Intelligence, attempting to replicate something based on how it is described or what it looks like gives us oranges called oranges and the brain made up of so many neurons.  Leave it out of science. Please.

If this makes sense, good. If not let me know I’ll do my best to explain further. If there are any errors my apologies .  Wrote this too fast.