The Brain’s Best Guess

2019 ◽  
pp. 337-356
Author(s):  
György Buzsáki
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Brain Dynamics ◽  
Mathematical Foundation ◽  
Skewed Distributions ◽  
Abstract Representations ◽  
Brain Correlates ◽  
High Diversity

In this final chapter, I propose that behavior-based calibration of perceptions and abstract representations are constrained by a preconfigured brain. The nervous system may have evolved to mimic the statistical probabilities of the physical world and the behavior of already existing species and thus become an efficient predictor of events. Because of their high diversity, neurophysiological and perceptual brain dynamics, both spanning several orders of magnitude, share a common mathematical foundation: the log rule. The tails of these wide and skewed distributions have apparently distinct qualitative features that we describe by discrete words, such as familiar and novel, rigid and plastic, good-enough and precise. Yet every novel situation contains elements of familiarity. Brain correlates of newly acquired experience are not created in the sense of adding new neuronal words to an ever-expanding vocabulary. Instead, the preconfigured brain is a dictionary in which the behavioral significance or meaning of initially nonsense neuronal words is acquired through exploration.

Chapter I. The British Economy to End-1972

1973 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 9-33
Keyword(s):  
Full Employment ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Forecast ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Detailed Assessment ◽  
Employment Potential ◽  
Economic Developments

Chapter I presents a general review of economic developments in 1972 including an attempt to assess the position of the economy in relation to its full employment potential. Chapter II includes the usual short-term forecast of likely developments over the next eighteen months together with a less detailed assessment of prospects over the rather longer term. Recent developments in and short-term prospects for various industries within the industrial production index are dealt with in some detail in Chapter III, while the final chapter contains our annual review and forecasts for the World Economy.

Reclassification of Signs

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongwei Jia
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Text Interpretation ◽  
The Core ◽  
Solid Foundation ◽  
New Research

Abstract Previous semiotic research classified human signs into linguistic signs and non-linguistic signs, with reference to human language and the writing system as the core members of the sign family. However, this classification cannot cover all the types of translation in the broad sense in terms of sign transformation activities. Therefore, it is necessary to reclassify the signs that make meaning into tangible signs and intangible signs based on the medium of the signs. Whereas tangible signs are attached to the outer medium of the physical world, intangible signs are attached to the inner medium of the human cerebral nervous system. The three types of transformation, which are namely from tangible signs into tangible signs, from tangible signs into intangible signs, and from intangible signs into tangible signs, lay a solid foundation for the categorization of sign activities in translation semiotics. Such a reclassification of signs can not only enrich semiotic theories of sign types, human communication, and sign-text interpretation, but also inspire new research on translation types, the translation process, translators’ thinking systems and psychology, and the mechanism of machine translation.

scholarly journals Stuck in a State of Inattention? Functional Hyperconnectivity as an Indicator of Disturbed Intrinsic Brain Dynamics in Adolescents With Concussion: A Pilot Study

ASN NEURO ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 175909141775380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela M. Muller ◽  
Naznin Virji-Babul
Keyword(s):  
Diffusion Tensor Imaging ◽  
Pilot Study ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Diffusion Tensor ◽  
Brain Dynamics ◽  
Public Health Issue ◽  
Brain Correlates ◽  
Brain States ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Structural Brain

Sports-related concussion in youth is a major public health issue. Evaluating the diffuse and often subtle changes in structure and function that occur in the brain, particularly in this population, remains a significant challenge. The goal of this pilot study was to evaluate the relationship between the intrinsic dynamics of the brain using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) and relate these findings to structural brain correlates from diffusion tensor imaging in a group of adolescents with sports-related concussions ( n = 6) and a group of healthy adolescent athletes ( n = 6). We analyzed rs-fMRI data using a sliding windows approach and related the functional findings to structural brain correlates by applying graph theory analysis to the diffusion tensor imaging data. Within the resting-state condition, we extracted three separate brain states in both groups. Our analysis revealed that the brain dynamics in healthy adolescents was characterized by a dynamic pattern, shifting equally between three brain states; however, in adolescents with concussion, the pattern was more static with a longer time spent in one brain state. Importantly, this lack of dynamic flexibility in the concussed group was associated with increased nodal strength in the left middle frontal gyrus, suggesting reorganization in a region related to attention. This preliminary report shows that both the intrinsic brain dynamics and structural organization are altered in networks related to attention in adolescents with concussion. This first report in adolescents will be used to inform future studies in a larger cohort.

Does Queer Political Theory Have a Future?

Shame ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogdan Popa
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Future ◽  
Eve Sedgwick ◽  
Lauren Berlant

In this final chapter I reflect upon the possibilities unleashed by recent scholarship in queer political theory. First, I discuss the future of queer political thinking by insisting that the act of interpretation has to draw on how one becomes both irritated by and surprised by scholarly arguments. As an affective practice, irritation offers the incentive to challenge what is already known while the surprise opens up a new territory for investigation. Second, to enact my interpretative method, I critically engage with the work of Eve Sedgwick, Leo Bersani, José Esteban Muñoz, and Lauren Berlant to argue that queer practices can articulate an equality-oriented vision of politics.

The Problem

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-58
Author(s):  
Dale Purves
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Real World ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Sensory Systems ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Physical Parameters ◽  
Everyday Experience ◽  
Nervous Systems ◽  
Neural Connections ◽  
Sensory Inputs

Although understanding neural functions has progressed at a remarkable pace in recent decades, a fundamental question remains: How does the nervous system relate the objective world to the subjective domain of perception? Everyday experience implies that the neural connections on which we and other animals depend link physical parameters in the environment with useful responses. But that interpretation won't work: biological sensory systems cannot measure the physical world. Whereas something is linking sensory inputs to useful responses, it is not the physical world that instruments measure. How, then, have we animals met this challenge, and what is it that we end up perceiving? The purpose of this chapter is to suggest how nervous systems have evolved to deal with the inability to convey the objective properties of the real world.

scholarly journals Conceptual Complexity and the Evolution of the Lexicon

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Molly Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Cognitive Systems ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Parsimonious Explanation

Natural languages are filled with regularities. Where do these regularities come from? A parsimonious explanation is that these regularities emerge as a consequence of pressures within the broader context in which language is used: Communication among many cognitive systems. In this dissertation, I consider one particular regularity as a case study in how the dynamics of language use might shape language structure. Specifically, I focus on a bias in natural language to map long words on to conceptually complex meanings and short words on to conceptually simple meanings, or a complexity bias. Across a series of experimental and corpus studies, I explore whether languages and their speakers have a complexity bias, what conceptual complexity is, and what pressures might have lead to this bias over the course of language evolution. In the final chapter, I consider a broader range of linguistic phenomena and examine how aspects of language use might influence these structures.

scholarly journals Tangible Representational Properties: Implications for Meaning Making

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
Taciana Pontual Falcão
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Multimodal Interaction ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Construction Of Knowledge ◽  
Symbolic Information ◽  
Abstract Representations ◽  
Cultural Standards ◽  
Tangible Technologies ◽  
Physical Components

Tangible technologies are considered promising tools for learning, by enabling multimodal interaction through physical action and manipulation of physical and digital elements, thus facilitating representational concrete–abstract links. A key concept in a tangible system is that its physical components are objects of interest, with associated meanings relevant to the context. Tangible technologies are said to provide ‘natural’ mappings that employ spatial analogies and adhere to cultural standards, capitalising on people’s familiarity with the physical world. Students with intellectual disabilities particularly benefit from interaction with tangibles, given their difficulties with perception and abstraction. However, symbolic information does not always have an obvious physical equivalent, and meanings do not reside in the representations used in the artefacts themselves, but in the ways they are manipulated and interpreted. In educational contexts, meaning attached to artefacts by designers is not necessarily transparent to students, nor interpreted by them as the designer predicted. Using artefacts and understanding their significance is of utmost importance for the construction of knowledge within the learning process; hence the need to study the use of the artefacts in contexts of practice and how they are transformed by the students. This article discusses how children with intellectual disabilities conceptually interpreted the elements of four tangible artefacts, and which characteristics of these tangibles were key for productive, multimodal interaction, thus potentially guiding designers and educators. Analysis shows the importance of designing physical-digital semantic mappings that capitalise on conceptual metaphors related to children’s familiar contexts, rather than using more abstract representations. Such metaphorical connections, preferably building on physical properties, contribute to children’s comprehension and facilitate their exploration of the systems.

Pearl S. Buck: The Final Chapter (review)

1989 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 756-757
Author(s):  
Dennis W. Petrie

Amplifications of Subjectivity: Aleksandr Zel’dovich’s The Target (2010)

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vlad Strukov
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Self Recognition ◽  
Key Points ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Fallen World

In the final chapter, I am concerned with the confirmation of the subject as a transcendent category in the moment of self-recognition whereby the finite identity is rejected in favour of the infinite Self. Zel’dovich’s The Target employs the sublime as a drama of subject-formation—both as a story of emergence and obliteration—whereby the limits of the self are conceived as a movement away from the self into the topography of solitary subjectivity confronted with open-ended being. The subject becomes an excess of discourse itself, that is, it centres on self-preservation which ensures infinity in stasis. The subject enters the divine state of amnesia after cataclysmic disruptions: the subject is no longer a tyrannous architect of the fallen world but a pre-eminent observer of the unfolding universe. I am particularly interested in the cinematic materiality of the sublime and the immateriality of subjectivity existing outside the temporal framework of history. I centre on issues of scale and amplification as matters of cultural vibration in a post-apocalyptic world. I conclude by demonstrating how Zel’dovich’s The Target with focuses on transient spaces and the epiphany of the universal monad. Thus, this chapter summates the key points presented in the book.

The Perception of Time

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Treisman
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Temporal Information ◽  
Close Correspondence ◽  
Psychological Model ◽  
Secondary Quality ◽  
Quality Distinction ◽  
Perception Of Time

This chapter aims to present a psychological model of how people perceive time, and to explain some experimental evidence supporting it. It suggests that the apparently close correspondence between the spatiotemporal structures of the perceived world and of the physical world, in contrast to the complex and controversial relation between, for example, perceived colour and light, lies at the root of the primary quality/secondary quality distinction. It also examines the neural mechanisms by which people keep track of time. The answer to this question is a model in which the nervous system itself produces temporal information, in the form of a ‘pacemaker’ or pacemakers that emit pulses at regular characteristic intervals; the model also includes a ‘calibration unit’ to allow for flexibility in the accuracy of timing. The chapter ends by surveying the experimental evidence for this model, including EEG studies.

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