Friday, June 22, 2007
New Theory suggests brain may have two captains for the one ship.
June 19, 2007 -- A probe of the upper echelons of the human brain's chain-of-command has found strong evidence that there are not one but two complementary commanders in charge of the brain, according to neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
These two 'commanders' do not consult one another but act toward a common puspose — control of voluntary, goal-oriented behavior. This includes a vast range of activities from reading a word to searching for a star to singing a song, but likely does not include involuntary behaviors such as control of the pulse rate or digestion.
For example, on rare occasions patients with brain injuries will develop behaviors that are stimulus-bound: Every time they encounter a particular stimulus, they respond exactly the same way. One man with a brain injury started undressing everytime he saw a bed, regardless of whether it was in a furniture store or his own bedroom.
It is done using MRI scans (mainly Raichle's work) and graph theory, which is a bit like category theory.
Petersen cites body temperature, which is regulated by several independent factors including sweat glands, metabolism and activity level. When one controlling factor goes awry, others can try to compensate for it. Having established that two control networks existed, researchers turned back to their functional brain scans for insight into the networks' roles. One network, dubbed the cinguloopercular network, was linked to a "sustain" signal. In contrast, the frontoparietal network was consistently active at the start of mental tasks and during the correction of errors.
IMO: The approach to these problems is extremely interesting. For a long time I have felt that complex system theory may lead to more detailed enlightenment on the brain's behaviour, and I am providing some material when at the Salzburg and Budapest conferences next month. I do think that many fundamental apects of theory of consciousness could also do with reviewing, nice current popular references by Chalmers here, and all these views are so readily overturnable.
These two 'commanders' do not consult one another but act toward a common puspose — control of voluntary, goal-oriented behavior. This includes a vast range of activities from reading a word to searching for a star to singing a song, but likely does not include involuntary behaviors such as control of the pulse rate or digestion.
For example, on rare occasions patients with brain injuries will develop behaviors that are stimulus-bound: Every time they encounter a particular stimulus, they respond exactly the same way. One man with a brain injury started undressing everytime he saw a bed, regardless of whether it was in a furniture store or his own bedroom.
It is done using MRI scans (mainly Raichle's work) and graph theory, which is a bit like category theory.
Petersen cites body temperature, which is regulated by several independent factors including sweat glands, metabolism and activity level. When one controlling factor goes awry, others can try to compensate for it. Having established that two control networks existed, researchers turned back to their functional brain scans for insight into the networks' roles. One network, dubbed the cinguloopercular network, was linked to a "sustain" signal. In contrast, the frontoparietal network was consistently active at the start of mental tasks and during the correction of errors.
IMO: The approach to these problems is extremely interesting. For a long time I have felt that complex system theory may lead to more detailed enlightenment on the brain's behaviour, and I am providing some material when at the Salzburg and Budapest conferences next month. I do think that many fundamental apects of theory of consciousness could also do with reviewing, nice current popular references by Chalmers here, and all these views are so readily overturnable.
# posted by uv : 8:53 AM
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