socspace at aol.com (Harley) wrote in message news:<4f0b2e30.0202071814.5775c85d at posting.google.com>...
> Would someone care to comment upon/critique the following assertion
> taken
> from a post to a social science newslist. I myself do not know how
> much
> confidence to place in it
>> <<That reminds me of the language of ants which consists mainly of
> pheromone signals, just like the brain language consists mainly of
> neurotransmitters. Biologists say that ant languages have 10-20 words.
> My guess is that none of them contains more than 16 words, because it
> is at 16 bits/sec that a semblance of consciousness can appear, at
> least in the human brain.
I've never heard of this 16bits/sec concept and no idea what it would
actually mean in terms of neurobiology/neurochemistry/neurophysiology.
If you want to cite it I suggest you ask for a lot more detail. If
it were an important concept I'm sure it would be much more widely
known as it would be a great leap forward in understanding the brain!
Using the word 'bits' I think the author is trying to imply
computation (16 is 2^4 again implying some sort of binary-based
computation). From where does the evidence for this claim come?
Investigations of brain tissue or computer modelling of theoretical
neural systems? If it is the latter then the whole question of how you
decide what is conscious comes into play, and if the author had an
naswer to that I would very much like to hear it.
Further I think the whole statement above is a bit confused... ants
may well use 20 or so pheromone signals but to call it a language
would be to suggest some conscious decision by ants based on
'smelling' or detecting the pheromone. Given the simplicity of an ant
I would suggest that the pheromones simply activate predicatble and
highly evolved 'reflexes' or behaviours that give the impression of a
'decision' being made but in reality are just a mechanism that has
developed to succesfully coordinate the actions of the many ants in a
colony.
>> Should I use your comments I plan to cite them as coming from a
> subscriber(so a neurosience group -- unless, of course, you give me
> permission to be more specific.
>> Harley