"konstantin kouzovnikov" <myukhome from hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.23.1171993192.5139.neur-sci from net.bio.net...
> It is an amazing piece of scientific communication which deserves a good
> director, a better one than in the Beautiful Mind (actually, no reference
> here to Ken at all, as I think he is a wonderfully sane guy, just in a
> different part of the normal distribution, just dangerously too to the
> right which makes his desperate attempts to become accepted simply sad:
> the guy does not know who he is and what is means to be where, socially
> speaking, his mind is - on the top).
There is Reason in, and behind everything
I post, and the way I post it.
I'm just not Free to disclose that which I
don't disclose.
Much of this is because I refuse to des-
cend to hurting others for 'personal gain'.
The rest of it is Pure-Savagery that's been
none of my doing.
>>(except for the first
>>post in this thread, which is 100x more intelligent than anything I;ve
>>ever seen you post)
>> Brilliance is just like pregnancy, it's ether you are or you are not
> pregnant; so, could it be that our problems with comprehending Ken's
> "world" are also caused by the factors which originate on this side of the
> communication?
I like the way C. F. Kettering said much the same:
"Whenever you look at a piece of work and you think
the fellow is crazy, then you want to pay some atten-
tion to that. One of you is likely to be, and you had
better find out which it is. It makes a lot of difference.
:-]
> I am going to line up some of your arguments here, Ian, then comment on
> them:
>>>I think there may be serious issue with your TD E/I stuff here.
>>using your case of the cerebellum as an example,
>> there is no issue here at all, it is inhibition, not excitation that is
> responsible for functional flexibility; in other words, information
> prosession which follows excitation of specific neurons should not be
> equated to self-management of the brain; in other words, executive
> functioning is not a part of brain's self-management about which Ken is
> talking about; there are very few hard data on this fact, but the recent
> neuroimaging demonstration of frontal cortex , through cerebellum,
> inhibiting cardiovagal system, to allow appropriate cardiac response to
> support a physical effort, is a good example; in any event inhibition is
> all what cerebellum does; plus, correct me if I am wrong, Ian, there was
> no work done on decerebrated animals which included more than
> supratentorial brain parts removal; it means that all we know in that
> domain invariably includes cerebellum and brain stem, together; the cases
> involving removal of cerebellum always included leaving supratentorial
> parts, at least in part, intact; iam I wrong?
The neocerebellum communicates throughout
the neocortex.
>>This implies, however, that the optimal TD E/I ratio is
>>achieved when the brain is at rest, i.e. not signaling.
>> Why is it not at least intuitively true to you? Are you personally capable
> of sitting and starring on your mauntain/fire/sea/face of your child for
> hours and hours and enjoying it? doing nothing?
"Boredom" is reduced to its underpinning
neural dynamics in AoK.
[I didn't reply to the original post because
doing so would have required me to 'write
a book'. FWIW, that's what, it seems to me,
the OP was hoping his posts would elicit
from me. The whole 'cross-posting' thing
was a 'set-up', probably by muck-raking
folks, who know more than their 'naive'
post let-on.]
>>The disturbing
>>part about this is that the logical extension of this postulate is
>>that TD E/I ratio is optimal during unconsciousness, coma, and
>>especially death.
>> Have you ever heard about regression tendency and why, sometimes, it takes
> place? alternatively, when it doesn't, we are, equally disturbingly, must
> be socially nurtured, supported, prompted, reared, fed, accepted? It would
> be absolutely disturbing to state anything opposite to what you just have
> said as by doing so we would reduce humanity to functioning of brain with
> utter disregard to its environment and what it does to brain.
Yes, nervous system and environment are
one energy-environment, with the nervous
system on the inside, looking out, which is
why the great decussations and commissures
exist as they do [of course, via evolutionary-
convergence.]
Nervous systems enable behavior because,
in terms of 3-D-Energydynamics, they are
continuous.
> Ken's approach leads to the exactly these conclusions. Again, I am
> questioning your intuition here: are you surprised when your mobile gets
> "pretend-dead" for a while after you dropped it?
> A confident scholar of brain science, you do know that brain (as in
> nervous system) is organized in hierarchical fashion. Why the idea of TD
> E/I mechanism being a tool for also sequential shut down of higher systems
> for the reason of preserving the essential systems (economic argument is
> here) so threatening to you? Unconscious processing, just like coma or
> death are the outcomes of autonomous decision making performed by brain
> based on the economy of a/ the overall functioning and b/ regional, and
> what is especially important, hierarchical priority based, regional
> economy.
>>>>The fact that brain can shift the TD E/I in a rapid and coordinated
>>fashion through various areas is what makes them good at doing
>>everything that brains do.
>> Absolutely!!! if brain can afford it in every specific case, though.
>> Getting as into unconscious mode, coma, death is just a few extreme cases
> of such "coordination" when the resources are not there. Nothing is wrong
> with it if you believe that in choosing a lesser evil among multiple is
> not a bad idea of how to manage business... to survive.
>> The fact that the bursts are often short is
>>what makes them able to compute many discrete stimuli in a rapid
>>period of time. However, there are often long-lasting events of either
>>excitation or inhibition; or rhythmically generated waves of activity
>>that are equally important to motivation, emotion and cognition.
>> See. your thinking about brain as brain is a kitchen with one shelf only.
> You are confusing synaptic transmission (exitation or inhibition wise)
> with what brain does. It is so.... 1995! (hope you are smiling). I think
> Ken is working on a higher level of information processing - subsystems
> about which we are all not entirely sure.
I'm entirely-sure, else I'd not be 'bothering'
anyone with NDT.
The problem is that I cannot say all of NDT
in a single post. I've been discussing it,
online, over the course of 19 'years'. People
come and go, catching only bits and pieces.
Then they 'presume' what they didn't read
wasn't written and posted.
This problem is merely-artifactual with re-
spect to whether or not folks were reading
when I was writing.
I'm willing to reiterate anything, but each
thing in a logical sequence, not when
someone barges-in, telling me what
'the sequence should be'.
Meanwhile, I write in a way that cares for
the interests of those who have been
reading all along.
I want to Honor the work they've done
in reading-all-along. [Even though I
know that Truth is that no one's been
reading all along -- I mean some have
read =some= of 'all-along' :-]
> I hope you would agree that you do not know how wrap up all these
> excitation/inhibition, rhythms, and activities into motivation, emotion,
> and cognition (I am rather surprised you left out memory, attention,
> actions and volition).
And curiosity, creativity, affective 'states',
cognition, and unified-consciousness.
> And
>>all of them violate your theory of the purpose of brains being to
>>optimize TD E/I ratios - not to mention disorders of brain activity
>>such as epilepsy.
There are ["of course"] mechanisms
within "the brain" which function to
routinely =increase= TD E/I. All of
these have been discussed in AoK
all along.
> Brain is not stupid. It maintains what it is capable of maintaining:
> - there are different kinds of epilepsy;
> - in all cases the guy /girl is alive, despite seizures;
> - what does it tell you? one answer is : based on some TD E/I ratios some
> subsystems are on their own and are isolated by their own pathology aND
> THE LEVEL OF THE FUNCTIONAL HIERARCHY IT BELONGS TO, i.e. the other
> subsystems are OK; Makes sense as some Italian would ask?
The "hierarchy" stuff is not so good
because nervous systems are
=tightly= globally-integrated.
Karl Lashley settled this matter,
as far as I'm concerned.
"Mass action" and "equipotentiality" [~1950]
Yes, there are various "overlays" within
visual cortex, and there are primary and
'secondary' cortical areas, and 'circuits'
in subcortically-based preprocessing,
but each of these areas are flat-out
necessary within 'the' nervous system's
integrated functioning, so I do not see
any way that they can be ordered in a
"hierarchy" -- lesion them, and the
=whole= of the remaining nervous sys-
tem's functionality changes.
I think "hierarchy" is just one of those
'fancy' words that folks like to use to
declare their 'membership' in 'clubs'.
It's not at all helpful with respect to
understanding nervous system func-
tion.
Please correct me if you think I'm wrong,
here.
> - this is NOT all or nothing business, in human brain, unless is has to go
> dead, at least temporary - this is why some surgeons make a fellow go
> dead, temporarily. Why? Sometimes it is good for you.
>>>Think about it.
>> Thank you, father/dude. It is your turn now. But take into consideration
> the following:
>> - Ken is saying in his own way everything D. Marr has ever did in his
> cerebellar and cortical theory, which is.. back and very much alive.
I went to bring NDT to Dr. Marr only to
find his colleagues cleaning out his
office.
Gave them some of my work back
then.
Never heard from them again.
[I've thousands of 'stories' like this one.
Everyone obviously likes what I've given
to them :-]
> What he is missing is the "second", but also very essential piece exactly
> from the 70s science which was bet up and now is making its way back. This
> time I am referring to Kilmer's concept of "action selection mechanism".
I worked this out on my own [the de-
velopment work is fully-documented],
and it's been in AoK all along.
It was this statement of yours that
resulted in my wanting to reply to
your post, BTW.
> Your "it is nothing to do with cerebellum" refer to something that is not
> exactly is known or demonstrable, at the moment.
What do you want to know about cerebellar
function?
> The last year alone produced a number of new discoveries concerning as
> parallel as direct ("single synapse", as in 70s terminology) connections
> between cerebellum and frontal cortex.
The neocerebellum is widely connected
with the neocortex, especially neocortical
"association" areas.
This has been known since the 1970s.
> Similar wiring is being , very slowly, discovered in the brain stem.
You're discounting the work of Cajal
and his colleagues in Neuroanatomy.
The brain stem circuitry has been
sufficiently-mapped for most of
the 20th 'century'.
And, using the work of the Neuroanatomists,
it's neural dynamics can be worked-out [and
were worked-out] by taking advantage of
phenomena like decussation with respect
to cerebellum's entirely-inhibitory outputs.
Starting from 'there', and working to grad-
ually integrate everything.
Everything that was necessary to do so
was just sitting in the Library [and has
been cited in AoK all along.]
> I mean as the technology capable finding outr what Posterior Fossa has or
> has not to do is evolving only recently and very gradually. I would not be
> so sure as you are when talking about these extremely neglected
> structures.
> In short, if Ken would alo include another postulate that human brain, in
> health, having a very specific number of such "ratios" , which all related
> to the structural and functional characteristics of the nechamisms
> responsible for action selection,
It's been in AoK all along.
> and then add another postulate concerning exponential "transmission" of
> such ratios to the higher, newer brain functional zones (suprantentorial
> functional zones),
I don't know what you mean by,
"exponential transmission".
By "newer brain functional zones",
I presume you mean neocortex
and neocerebellum.
What else is "newer"?
> the concept would be rather complete and allow, here and now, very
> specific research strategy.
NDT is only a beginning, but one
that is in a direction that will with-
stand all tests for all 'time', in that
lasting way, it's already complete,
even though it's just a beginning.
> It is too bad he does not know that there is a theoretical "invariant" of
> his thinking which is the concept of Intrinsic Brain Activity according to
> which a pattern of oscillations when taken at rest and then converted into
> specific "ratios" may serve as a more reliable indicator of "norm" and
> pathology" related to what you, Ian, indicated as "more long-term
> conditions/states" which have very little to do with synaptic
> connectivity, excepot serving a role of such transmission's
> "environment", i.e. the boundaries of what synaptic transmission can or
> cannot do.
All of this has been Reified in AoK
all along.
I even give specific references that
give the "theoretical 'invariant'" [if I
understand what you mean -- I
mean that data confirming the
way nervous system is governed
via TD E/I-minimization have been
explicitly cited in AoK all along.]
> One more comment to Steve's response re reflexive behavior. Pls take the
> periphery as still a part of the same brain. The absense of volitional
> input should not be equated with brain having "nothing to do" with a
> reflex. Naturally, I am refering to ken's clear statements that there is
> no one "ratio", but a number of them, in my view, organized hirarchically.
All TD E/I-minimization is integrated.
It's why consciousness is unified,
and why, for instance, a man can
put his pants on, one leg at a time,
without falling over :-]
> Well done, Ken. It is much lesser evil to have communication problems than
> a "tribal" bias. Nice to see someone well ahead of the pack.
>> Konstantin Kouzovnikov.
You're too-kind, Konstantin.
You'll "blow my cover" as a 'trouble-maker' :-]
Please understand that, in my comments,
above, I'm just defending NDT as I rout-
inely do.
I never 'guess' about why folks take-up
the discussion.
When I'm not sure, I always reply in the
same way.
I enjoyed your thoughtful post.
Thank you for the work you put into it.
Cheers,
k. p. collins [ken]
