Comments on: Vision and How the Brain Organizes Itself

By: artfulD

artfulD — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:52:17 +0000

For what it’s worth, this is the blind artist’s website:
http://www.esrefarmagan.com/index-en.html
And here are some of the color paintings:
http://www.esrefarmagan.com/works/images.pdf

By: artfulD

artfulD — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:08:48 +0000

Stomps, that was one of the best references ever. Tends to confirm we are born with the capacity to model what we can expect our sensory apparatus to discover, and to do so with regard to size, distance and perspective – which would certainly help in assessing the potential for any dangers or rewards involved.
As to colors, it seems clear that we not only expect to see them, but based on the way the artist seems to match colors with natural objects, we could have already attached some meaning to those observations.
Of course somebody has to have helped with pigment selection and thus may have told this artist what to put where, but there has been other evidence that colors have inherent meaning to us, and this could help to confirm it.

By: stompsfrogs

stompsfrogs — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:51:06 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3AgO6H0H98

I like fingerpaints.

By: Yngve

Yngve — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 19:17:26 +0000

Interresting stuff.
All of this ties neatly into what I’ve read, from Steven Pinker, Bruce M. Hood, Gary Marcus, David J Linden and, ofcource, this blog (been lurking for some time now).
And it makes perfect sense.
I’m really excited as to what future research will show. Are there more innate distinctions lurking in our head? (probably)
- And what will they tell us about ourselves?
Is there plasticity in other areas that may tie into innate functions, making a difference in the pronounciation of their effect?
Sort of piggybacking on an existing feature, promoting one or more aspect whilst supressing others…
(Did those last sentences even make sense…? I’m not a neurologist, hehe)

By: Woody

Woody — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:50:43 +0000

Very interesting. I am curious whether the ventral stream partitioning is truly based on living vs. nonliving or animate vs. inanimate. In other words, would a tree or a barnacle activate the medial or lateral ventral stream?

By: daedalus2u

daedalus2u — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:50:18 +0000

One of the best documented cases for NO being important in neurodevelopment is its role in the refinement of the mapping fidelity between the retina and the visual cortex. If nitric oxide synthase is inhibited the fidelity of that mapping is poor. This refinement occurs largely by the elimination of connections under conditions where nitric oxide synthase is not inhibited. Presumably the importance of NO in refinement of connections is not limited to the visual cortex.

In the fMRI BOLD technique, where changes in the levels of oxyhemoglobin are measured in real time by how the magnetic susceptibility affects the MRI signal, what causes the differential blood flow is acute changes in the level of nitric oxide. Levels of NO in this range do affect long term potentiation and long term depression, so presumably they are important in neuronal remodeling even in adults.

By: twanvl

twanvl — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:04:25 +0000

One question that immediately comes to mind is: what is considered living? Do we recognize robots as alive? How about dolls?

If the specific instances are learned, then how does the brain make a choice of which region to use? Perhaps based on whether it moves unpredictably? Or on an animal-like shape?

By: Enzo

Enzo — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:57:28 +0000

Patterning is amazing.

I am not very surprised to find that our brains are patterned at least partially by genetics, but I’m still astounded that the entire process of development occurs with exquisite reproducibility from individual to individual. There are roughly 30,000 genes in the human genome, hardly enough to encode for a detailed map of every organ system’s structure, especially considering the complexity of the brain. There is no gene that says “put this cell here juxtaposed to this cell and form this type of connection between them.”

It’s just so cool that organisms have developed to code for the building blocks and leave the rest of the building up to the laws of chemistry and physics.

Thanks for the insight into the brain. I think a lot of us underestimate how much we are learning about the biological frontier.

By: artfulD

artfulD — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:49:54 +0000

Living things can eat you, especially if you fail to distinguish them from knick knacks. Actually the distinction is about the potential that an object has for predictable behaviors.