Ask a Neuroscience Professor

[frob2900]

By analogy, I think it's similar to how people working on Relativity and QM are trying to build a "Theory of Everything". They're coming from different directions, but the end-goal is the same.

I don't understand the "coming from different directions" analogy. Anyone working on a "Theory of Everything" (by which I assume you mean a QFT for all four forces) probably needs an equal grasp of both QFT and GR.

Both of those are quantitative disciplines whereas Philosophy is not.

 

[El_Machinae]

But the newest discoveries in GR or QM are going to come from specialists, and then the specialists will translate the results into a point where the generalists can incorporate them together. People can't be an expert of everything, at least not enough of an expert to be at the utter cutting-edge.

But you're right, to be helpful, cognitive philosophy will have to change in subtle ways to increase its contributions.

 

[frob2900]

But the newest discoveries in GR or QM are going to come from specialists, and then the specialists will translate the results into a point where the generalists can incorporate them together. People can't be an expert of everything, at least not enough of an expert to be at the utter cutting-edge.

Yes, of course, this is true in any discipline. Specialized results require specialization and then people with their foots in several disciplines can combine the ideas into a cohesive whole.

I suppose the question is (like you stated) whether Philosophy of Mind is a useful discipline in the sense that the results derived there can be incorporated with results from other fields related to cognition.

I don't presume to know enough about these subjects, but I know of an analogous situation in physics, and that is the Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics. Ever since the invention QM in the early 1900's it has been the quantitative side of the subject that has produced results, whereas the philosophy has only been a side hobby, often pursued by scientists after they have reached semi-retirement and don't have any more usable results to produce.

Niels Bohr is a good example in that context. After his initial successes he switched his attention to the philosophical side of things and subsequently mostly just hindered progress by not paying attention to experiments as much as he should.

[EDIT] That's not to say philosophy can't be interesting. Sure, it can. I just meant that at least in the QM context it hasn't really produced anything useful. Even Bell's work in the 70's (which often crops up in philosophical discussions on the subject) was rooted in considering the matter from an experimental point-of-view rather than a purely philosophical.

 

[silver 2039]

What do you think of priions? How exactly do they work in their effect on the brain? What are they classified as? I've heard their neither living nor non-living so what exactly are they? Also they apparently they're present in tribes in Papua New Guinea where they eat the brain of their decesead members. How to these priions go on to "infect" the brain after they are consumed? What are their symptoms? If "infected" is there any cure?

 

[C~G]

By analogy, I think it's similar to how people working on Relativity and QM are trying to build a "Theory of Everything". They're coming from different directions, but the end-goal is the same.

Something similar yes, problem is that there's this obscure philosophical language from earlier times involved with the problem that neuroscience as science based into biology is seen more deeply rooted to "reality".
Engineers don't understand programmers and vice versa.

I wonder how much a researcher will eventually have to worry about subjective research.

Actually there has been idea that you would have to get information from first person view (immediate commentary, later commentary based into memory and critical feedback), third person view (camera, control person etc.) and from brain scan (and other measurements) at the same time if any kind of results could be actually achieved to the point of them being truly testable.
Based into that even simple test (picking up particular object etc.) can take quite long time then.
But that is only way to get actual results.

Getting feedback from a patient while hunting down the "Homunculus" is tough to 100% be confident of, because we run into strange situations where the "self" is separated from the neural machinery needed to communicate with the researcher. For example, the "self" seems to be on the other side of someone with Wernicke's Aphasia (so, it's not the 'self' that's doing the speaking). Or, with alien-hand syndrome, you've got the person saying that they don't intend for the hand to move, but we really can't easily say where the 'self' is. In the end, you'd only know for sure if you felt it yourself. I'm guessing that TMS will be needed for these type of data.

Yeah. There are quite many models out there. I think some of them are still quite ridiculous or mysterian if you ask me.

But, more data and tools = good. I sometimes worry that we're not smart enough to understand consciousness. Heck, our brains are probably ad-hocing consciousness together from a great deal of the unconscious brain parts and thus shouldn't be expected to retain a full understanding of consciousness in the conscious segments of the brain.

I always think that phrase is self-refuting in "We aren't intelligent/conscious enough to understand our own intelligence/consciousness"-way.

But I think major issue what example Dennett (I just keep mentioning him, don't know why since I don't agree with him about everything) battles is to make people understand the illusion between the words "conscious" and "unconsciouss". The term was introduced to people not so long ago but it's clear these terms are really confusing not only to other people but even to some "experts" (including philosophers even more so to some ).
(Actually I have also some theory about the bias behind all this but let's leave that somewhere else...)

"Spontaneous" probably just means that they're not firing due to an action potential or stimulus from a known-source of firing. There could be a host of thermodynamc/QM reasons why a neuron would fire. A good jostling might get a neuron to fire, for example. And that would start a cascade.

The biological benefit could be that firing neurons "randomly" (yes, Sir, God plays dice but they are heavily weighted, just remember that) has resulted certain parts of the network being active even when they aren't actively used. This could be handy example using stored information in very associative fashion. You aren't expected to think something (very improbable) as solution to some issue but you still do as your brain founds some strange connection (that appears to be random) to some other information that can help.
Doing "random" things might have some strange actual effect from the perception of evolution. Maybe it has to do that Darwinian evolution also when it comes to human is social/cultural evolution to the invidual. Maybe if you pick behaviour more randomly from the patterns you have omited it helps create opportunities yourself in social circles so that kind of brain is favored by the evolution over brain that is more stagnant and less random.

I think maybe we shouldn't threadjack anything more here though.

Maybe I should ask OP something, something related...
Mark1031, are you named after the Harvard Mark?
Or more precisely, do you think computer can be used effectively (not as one to one) as an analogue to brain (computationalism)?

 

[frob2900]

Engineers don't understand programmers and vice versa.

The problem with that analogy is that engineering and computer programming are both deeply quantitative disciplines which are heavily rooted in experiments (experiments as is, reality will quickly tell you what was good idea and what was not).

In your analogy, when comparing a Neuroscientist and a Philosopher, who is the Engineer and who is the Programmer?

 

[C~G]

The problem with that analogy is that engineering and computer programming are both deeply quantitative disciplines which are heavily rooted in experiments (experiments as is, reality will quickly tell you what was good idea and what was not).

In your analogy, when comparing a Neuroscientist and a Philosopher, who is the Engineer and who is the Programmer?

Read this which I wrote earlier:

In kind of analogy, in this field people still work with old "supercomputers" and just recently there's has been some understanding that personal computers could some day arrive into each home.

How many programmers (philosophers) existed years ago when first computers appeared compared to engineers (neuroscientists)?

Of course the analogy isn't perfect neither I did it completely seriously but you do probably understand where it's coming from?

 

[Perfection]

Engineers don't understand programmers and vice versa.

Perfs is an engineer who understands programmers.

 

[C~G]

Perfs is an engineer who understands programmers.

That is very good, same should happen with philosophy of mind (or maybe it should be philosophy of brain from now on ) and neuroscience.

I asked the computationalism question since it's perfectly wise also think that computer technology especially with the prospect of creating virtual enviroment will give increase to the information in the field when it comes to understanding both the process of the brain and reality.

 

[Mulholland]

What do you think of Stephen Pinker? Do you think he has done a good job of popularizing psychology and making it look less 'Boogeymanish'.

 

[frob2900]

Read this which I wrote earlier:
How many programmers (philosophers) existed years ago when first computers appeared compared to engineers (neuroscientists)?

Of course the analogy isn't perfect neither I did it completely seriously but you do probably understand where it's coming from?

Erm. Ok, well, I suppose I do. No, it isn't perfect.

 

[C~G]

To bump this thread and stop the threadjacking I thought to ask some questions.

Erm. Ok, well, I suppose I do. No, it isn't perfect.

Nothing is perfect so you have to start from some where in order to get your point through.

Mark1031, it seems you answered my question about computationalism earlier but I have some more personal questions:
1) How did you end up into the field? Was it your career of choice or was it just accident?
2) How have you liked to be in the field of neuroscience?
3) Do you recommend the field for someone and what kind of qualities you think person should have in order to enter it?
4) What do you think is the current state of neuroscience?
5) What you think are the most interesting prospects of your field when looking into the future and how do you see it's future in general?

Thanks for your answers this far.

 

[Mark1031]

Well it strikes me that there would need to be some sort system analagous to a logical inverter are there ways in which an action potential could prevent another action potential from going off?

There are all sorts of things that could serve this function. Probably the best is an inhibitory neuron. When it fires it inhibits the activity of neurons it is connected to. They are very important in controlling the timing and rhythmicity of neuronal firing.

Question: Are the ideas from many-body physics (condensed matter/collective phenomena/phase transitions etc.) having any influence on neuroscience? Some physicists like to pretend that the ideas from many-body theory can be applied to model neurological phenomena.

No idea if its true, but I've only read physicists on the matter, so I'd be interested to hear another perspective.

Dont know about this.

I have to say that this is the part that makes me bewildered about neuroscientists.
Of course we can consider it only as "neural activity" just like that the birds fly since they flap their wings and flow on air but don't you think it isn't necessary to explain how it all started and why such thing happen in the first place?
The whole idea is to tie the neural activity to the percepted mental phenomena (first person perspective) and possibly seek how they correlate with each other and regarding the huge amount of information about the brain already gathered but still lacking details the effort is done in quite simple theoretical level.

In general we could maybe explain that Qualia has to do with recognising pattern of certain sort of stimulus that correlates itself with certain earlier similar experienced patterns or is just tune with genetically decided patters. But Qualia in general has to do with one's conscious experience and what we think experience and reality is so in essence to order to how and why we experience reality we must understand these issues. Or Do androids dream of electic sheep?

The position "it happens to us through neutral activity" doesn't explain to who it happens. What seems to be the case that ultimately that kind of physicalism leads into back homuncus in Cartesian Theater as it doesn't explain how the "first person/user illusion" is created neither why? And I don't mean "why?" in sense how "why people die?" but in sense how it has evolved and what's the reason for it. "It just appears" doesn't explain anything.
It should be also noted how this kind of information affects pretty much everything ranging from behavioral biology even to economics.

Trying to explain in theory how and why is the field of philosophy and that's why I believe example Dennett is almost dead close to in terms of general framework deeply rooted to also neuroscientist findings. And simple reason is because he does crossfield research.

Well I am a bit of a Philistine on these issues. Now I am in no way qualified to judge the value of this area of study, I am a molecular neuroscientist who uses genetics to study memory in mice. I have a framework for understanding how the brain works and I think this these “feelings” (first person consciousness) are just an emergent illusion of brain function. I do not consider them particularly profound. You can stimulate areas of the brain and get what appear to be conscious thoughts. You can get lesions of specific areas of the brain that separate consciousness from actions. It is clear that the mind comes from the brain and I have just never seen a question formulated in such a way that the answer “specific patterns of neuronal activity” is not sufficiently satisfying for me.

Now why is evolutionary theory. I thought Dennett had a nice discussion on why we might have evolved this focus on 1st person actors.

 

[Mark1031]

True, but has it been proven that this random firing has a function? Does it bring us somewhere we would not have been without it?

It probably helps keep neurons alive. If neurons are not active for too long they start to degenerate. It probably has other functions that we don;t know.

 

[Mark1031]

What do you think of priions? How exactly do they work in their effect on the brain? What are they classified as? I've heard their neither living nor non-living so what exactly are they? Also they apparently they're present in tribes in Papua New Guinea where they eat the brain of their decesead members. How to these priions go on to "infect" the brain after they are consumed? What are their symptoms? If "infected" is there any cure?

I think they won Stanley Prusner a Nobel Prize. I don;t know the basis for their toxicity but they kill brain cells. They are aberrantly folded proteins. The protein itself is a normal constituent of the brain. They are living only in the sense that they are self replicating. If you get an aberrantly folded prion protein into you by like eating your ancestors brains or a Mad Cow then it will go on to fold the normal protein in your brain into the prion form and this will kill your brain cells. The symptoms vary depending on the nature of the disease, there are several. My father in law died of Crutzfeld Jacob Disease. It starts with motor problems and degenerates into general cognitive and motor decline. There is no treatment for any prion disease. They are extremely rare though.

 

[Birdjaguar]

They are living only in the sense that they are self replicating. If you get an aberrantly folded prion protein into you by like eating your ancestors brains or a Mad Cow then it will go on to fold the normal protein in your brain into the prion form and this will kill your brain cells.

How are they different from a virus?

 

[Perfection]

How are they different from a virus?

Prions act on protiens directly while virus infect the cells DNA or RNA.

Plus Viruses are much more complicated then a single protien.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Prions act on protiens directly while virus infect the cells DNA or RNA.

Plus Viruses are much more complicated then a single protien.

Proteins being just a molecule, or something more complicated?

 

[Fifty]

Why are mice such good candidates for scientific research on various things in psychology and neuroscience? Why not, say, squirrels (or some other arbitrarily chosen small mammal) instead?

 

[Perfection]

Proteins being just a molecule, or something more complicated?

Yep, big molecule.

Why are mice such good candidates for scientific research on various things in psychology and neuroscience? Why not, say, squirrels (or some other arbitrarily chosen small mammal) instead?

Squirrels are too busy waterskiing.