Genesis: The creation of a new structure or dynamics. It can come from rapid build up of changes, accidentally or by positive feedbacks. The changes break up the old structures and form new ones. Creation can also come from reproduction.
Differentiation (specialization): An undifferentiated aggregate can separate into distinct subgroups through positive feedback interactions among parts of the aggregate, or between the aggregate and its environment. Positive feedback interactions change the aggregate by reinforcing some parameters or associations. The differentiated parts may have symmetrical or complementary patterns relative to each other.
Complexity (diversity): aggregate will become more complex and diverse, due to their components that can and will combine in different ways to form new aggregates. It is like complex organic compounds being evolved from combination of simple organic elements.
Reproduction: An aggregate can be partially reproduced by repeated complementary interactions among some aggregates or parts of aggregates.
Memory-based mental activities take place in neural circuits, and manifest in language, consciousness, and spirituality.
MEMORY AND NEURAL CIRCUITS
Human memory is a replay of some dynamic activities in the nervous systems. The replay takes place in neural circuits, or neuronal maps, that fire specialized and general IFPs (impulse firing patterns) in response to input stimuli. The replay of IFPs corresponds to memory. These IFPs are measured coarsely by electrodes as electroencephalograms (EEGs), or finely by fMRI imaging devices. FMRI is tuned to detect regions in the brain with higher concentration of oxygen or greater flow of nutrients. That higher concentration or flow correspond to greater firings of neurons.
1) genesis
Neural circuits are neurons and surrounding neurochemicals connected efficiently and fire IFPs in response to stimuli signals, which can be from sensation, memory, perception, and emotion. Specific sensation, memory, perception, and emotion correspond to specific IFPs. The formation of neural circuits started in embryonic stage as part of growth development. This development happens by interactions of cellular components synthesized by RNA or DNA, which are biomolecules chained in specific sequences that reflect some of the evolutionary changes of the species.
The genesis of neural circuits in human embryos is a replay of some of the history of neuronal organization. This history can be traced to simple multicellular organisms where some component cells function as neurons. The neuron cells establish connections under a condition called neuroplasticity (or Hebbian learning or Hebb Rule), which is about reinforcing some economic gains for the signal transmission.
There is a direction of neural circuits development. The nervous systems in primitive organisms like jellyfish are decentralized. They have small number of neurons distributed all over the body. More complex invertebrates like shrimps have small clusters of neural nodes or ganglia. The neurons there are more concentrated in the localized nodes. In vertebrates like fish or horses there are centralized nervous systems with larger number of connected neurons. This development of circuits from diffused and distributed connections to centralized and hierarchical connections shows that there's an organizing force behind this evolution.
Feedback interactions are one of the factors that drives the proliferation and organization of neural circuits. Positive feedbacks reinforce such development. For example, some synaptic connections among neurons will lead to some physical responses that produce economic or survival advantages, which in turn promote further formation of similar neural circuits. It makes a positive feedback loop of mutual reinforcement.
The development of neural circuits can also be inherited through DNA/RNA by reproduction. The sequences of RNA/DNA molecules correspond to memory of partial bodily development of the prior generations. That memory includes the development of synaptic connections. At the embryonic stage neural circuits already begin for form. For vertebrates, the tissues of the nervous system at first look like tubes or cords, and later wrinkled cortices wrapping around layers of tissues full of specialized neuron cells. These neuron cells have great number of synaptic connections that will be pruned away later from infancy to adulthood.
Before birth, neural circuits are formed mostly by genetics. After birth, neural circuits continue to form and reform, but are affected by environmental factors conveyed through sensory stimuli. The postnatal development still follows the constraints of genetics, with the addition of neuroplasticity towards environment/internal conditions.
What about the genesis of nervous systems before organisms have developed neuron cells? Primitive sponges do not have a nervous system. The formation of neuron cells and neural circuits cannot come from the order of RNA/DNA in that case. Then, the origin of neurons and neuronal connections must come from some interactions in the proto-cells.
Accidental events and selective reinforcement of some responses to the events must have transformed some proto-cells into neuron cells. By trial-and-error, proto-cells that happen to respond to chemical signals from neighboring cells in ways that increase the efficiency of signal transmission are cells that can become neuron cells. Neurons are just specialized cells with highly efficient means of sending and receiving signals with other cells. The efficient means are reinforced by economic and survival advantages that come with such efficiency.
Cumulatively the reinforcement of signal transmission efficiency will transform some proto-cells to specialized neuron cells. They have dendrites (signal receiver) and axons (transmitter) emerged and enlarged to facilicate efficient transmission of signals. The formation of neural circuits is a continuation of this trend, to increase the efficiency of signal transmission at the level of grouped signals involving multiple neurons and even more dendrites.
2) differentiation
Neural circuits in the brain continuously reconfigure themselves throughout the lifespan of the brain. Some of the configurations are more stable than the others, but they are still all changeable. The reconfigurations take place in the synaptic connections and other places where signals are transmitted. Signal-enhanced synaptic connections make neural circuits different from one another, because there are differences in the stimuli signals. And circuits will be similar to each other if they repeatedly get similar stimuli signals. Otherwise they will diverge to different circuits as there are more different ways to connect than similar ways.
Differentiation and similarity of neural circuits, within one brain or among different brains, can also be described in terms of positive feedbacks. A positive feedback loop provides mutual reinforcement between the responses of neuronal signals and the stimuli from the environment. This reinforcement happens even during stages of synaptic pruning, from infancy to adulthood. During synaptic pruning, a large number of synapses are lost with dendrites and axons withered away. But many neural circuits are formed in the remaining synapses.
Neuroplasticity describes such reconfiguration of neural circuits, both pruning and formation, as strengthening by use and weakening by disuse. It's just another name to describe feedback interactions. Synaptic connection that get lots of signal transmissions become fortified into neural circuits. Those that don't get signals become dissolved.
Neural circuits will vary in response to variations in the stimuli signals they receive. The signals can be of different types and sources, like visual or auditory or emotional or memorial. The signals can also have different sequences, such as visual signals following auditory signals or visual signals following olfactory signals or memory signals concurrent with olfactory signals. The various signal types and sequences give rise to varying responses from connected neurons receiving these signals. That varying responses can be reinforced into differentiated neural circuits.
Suppose the stimuli are more visual. Then some neurons will be reinforced into neural circuits that will respond more efficiently to visuals. This will lead to sensitive visual observations, like reading facial features and expressions of other people. And the lack of exposure to visuals can lead to non-observance, like inability to read facial expressions of other species like sheep or cows. Autistic people are not as responsive to human facial expressions as non-autistics. That is due to a different cause. The vast synaptic connections may not have been properly pruned during infancy so that autistics are hypersensitive to visual and auditory stimuli, making them easily frightened and thus trying to avoid such sensations. They isolate themselves from interacting with other people, as described by Temple Grandin of her childhood with autism.
Specific neural circuits are strengthened by specific activities. A native English speaker has neural circuits specifically reinforced to pronounce English words in specific ways - the proper native-English-speaker way. But this proper way will become an accent when he tries to speak another language like Chinese or Spanish. The same goes for native Chinese speakers learning to speak English. Accent is a manifestation of how strongly the speech neural circuits of mother tongue have been reinforced and differentiated into specific configuration. New speech circuits are connected to and built upon the old speech circuits, extending the idiosyncrasies or patterns of IFPs from the old circuits.
In general, the character of a person is rooted in neural circuits formed during infancy and childhood. Newer or later neural circuits will form in connection to the earlier circuits, making those earlier neural circuits the core that is harder to reconfigure. Some foreigners can learn to speak a new language fluently like a native speaker. To achieve that the learner must rely on his old tongue as little as possible, and learn from scratch the new language like the native speakers do. That is building new speech neural circuits not on top of, but in parallel to, prior speech neural circuits.
Physically, different neural circuits are not segregated like separate entities. They are not isolated neurons with private synapses located in different regions of the brain. Rather, different circuits do share multiple common neurons and many synaptic connections. What differentiates them is based on the patterns in the stimuli signals. Different stimuli signals can trigger different patterns of response (or response signal pathways) in the all-connected jungle of neurons. And those response patterns are matched to neural circuits. Another way to view this is that a neural circuit will respond to all stimuli signals. It just responds with varying degrees of efficiency to signals from different sources and of different sequences. The one it responds to most strongly, what it resonates to, is what defines this circuit and making it seemingly unique.
Differentiation of neural circuits can also come from signals exchanged between neurons, in addition to signals from the environment to neurons. The inter-neuronal exchanges make a different kind of positive feedback loop, a loop where two components will differentiate into complementary or symmetric configurations.
One example of complementary configuration is the hierarchical structure of neuronal layers. Hierarchical layers carry information of different abstraction levels. A lower layer has information that is more raw or specific. A higher layer carries abstraction of raw information. A still higher layer carries meta-abstraction, or abstract of abstracted information. Raw data, for example, may be information of a territory. Abstraction of raw data can be information of a map of the territory, and meta-abstraction can be some features or characteristics of a map (that highlights some features of a territory).
In mammals, hierarchical differentiation of the nervous system can be exemplified macroscopically by the configuration of cerebellum and cerebrum (where neo-cortex is located). The cerebrum is like a neo-cerebellum, a newer layer over the cerebellum. Functionally, the cerebellum coordinates motor movements such as walking or breathing. It is done at the subconscious or unconscious levels. Above it, the cerebrum coordinates the cerebellum’s coordination at the conscious or subconscious levels. That is, a thought about walking or dancing can take place in the cerebrum. That thought signal goes to the cerebellum which then issues execution and coordination signals to the muscular-skeletal system, which then move the muscles that make the motion of walk/dance.
The cerebrum processes information at a higher hierarchical level than the cerebellum, which in turn is higher than the muscles. There are also correctional feedbacks exchanged between orientation neural circuits and cerebellum to correct and stabilize unbalanced movements. This arrangement of hierarchy and feedbacks has economic advantages. It leads to better survival in some ways. When it comes to competing for resources, hierarchical organization can plan and execute movements towards a goal more efficiently than distributed or democratic organizations. Such economic advantages will reinforce the configuration of hierarchical differentiations.
3) complexity
Complexity of neural circuits can arise from a combination of circuits, simple or complex.
A simple neural circuits is organized to respond efficiently to one type of stimulus signals. The type of stimuli can be sensory, such as contrasts of light/darkness, loud/quiet sound, hot/cold temperature, from sense organs like eyes, ears, skin, and so on. They can also be that of abstracted information, like perception (recognizing and identifying objects and events), memory (replaying and knowing past event), and emotion (feeling of joy, anger, fear, boredom, etc.)
A complex neural circuit is two or more circuits connected together. Each circuit may be simple or complex. The combination can be a s-s circuit (sensory and sensory, e.g. sensing light and sensing sound), or s-p (sensory and perceptual, e.g. sensing light/shadow and identifying a face pattern), or p-p (perceptual and perceptual, e.g. identifying fireplace and warmth in a room), p-m (perceptual and memory, e.g. seeing a decorated Christmas tree near the fireplace and remembering the past), m-e (memory and emotional, e.g. remembering an event in the past and feeling peaceful). The complexity can be extended to 3 parts like s-s-m, s-p-m, p-m-e, etc. and more.
Another kind of complexity is in the combination of circuits carrying different information levels. Information in different neuronal layers can be of different levels. There are levels like r (raw), a (abstract), aa (abstract of abstraction, meta-abstraction), aaa (abstract of aa), and so on. An abstract information is a classification, a generality, or a feature of the more specific information in the lower adjacent layer. Complex neural circuits combine circuits of the same or different information levels, like r-r (raw data and raw data, e.g. optical sensation and thermal sensation), r-a (raw data and abstraction, e.g. optical sensation and memory of optical patterns), a-a (abstraction and abstraction, e.g. recognizing a cat and feeling for a cat), a-aa (abstraction and meta-abstraction, e.g. perception of a dog and analysis of experience with a pet cat).
Complex neural circuits are also reinforced by repetition of similar stimuli, or disintegrated by lack of repetition of similar stimuli.
4) reproduction
A neural circuit is formed in part by the stimuli signals it receives. To reproduce another neural circuit elsewhere similar to one existing, what's needed is repetition of the same stimuli signals applied to a different place. Then the same organization of neuron connections will be reproduced in another nervous system, since they will interact and respond to the stimuli in the same way.
For example, people who can play the piano will have some neural circuits established in their brain to efficiently respond to the sound or notion of music. Those "musical" neural circuits can be replicated in the brains of other people who didn't have such circuits. The replication can be done by having the other people go through similar practice sessions that those established piano players had done. The motivation conducive to practice sessions in the novice can come from hearing or remembering piano music beautifully played by some pianists. This makes a circularly causal loop or reproduction cycle with chained complementary responses. Some musical neural circuits in the novice's brain are formed by piano practices. He plays music that in turn can inspire other novices to practice, reproducing similar neural circuits there in others' brains.
Neural circuits can also be partially reproduced through self-reconstruction. If an established neural circuit is partially damaged, that damaged part may be reconstructed by the habitual responses of other parts in and around the circuit. This reconstruction is like a reproduction process. New neuronal connections will be established to replicate the responses of the damaged neurons before they are damaged. Norman Doidge attributes this healing to neuroplasticity in his book The Brain That Changes Itself.
A hologram image remains fully preserved even when some parts of it are missing, because different parts of the image contain common or overlapping information. Such redundancy is probably similarly present in neural circuits, allowing activities of the undamaged parts to induce some neurons elsewhere to duplicate responses of the damaged part before it was damaged. It is also somewhat like the playback of sequential memory, where the full sequence of playback can be brought out by (the initial) part of the sequence.
NEURAL CIRCUITS AND CONSCIOUSNESS
Consciousness is what we are aware of, from the senses, emotions, and thinking. With memory we can identify what we sense and feel, which then become perception or cognition. Along with perception of information, consciousness can also have abstract aspects like consideration, imagination, concentration, and will.
Consciousness corresponds to a mental phenomenon where a large number of member IFPs have cohered together as a group IFPs, with high degree of coordination and mutual reference in their inter-activities. The grouped IFPs play dominantly, like a resonant movement, over other less-cohered IFPs. The dominance raises them to the conscious level, which is the realm of perception that we are aware of, from the subconscious or unconscious level. The IFPs that do not play so dominantly remain at the levels of subconsciousness or unconscious, which barely or not register as perception.
1) genesis
Consciousness arises from subconsciousness or unconsciousness when enough IFPs in various neural circuits have come together and play as a coordinated group. The grouped play starts and sustains itself by way of feedbacks, where one IFPs triggers another and then another and so on. When such chained triggering pushes the group-play to a high "resonant" level, then the group is dominating over other IFPs and becomes the focus, the conscious part of awareness.
The group resonance is not just the total magnitude (voltage) of the IFPs play (impulse firings). It is more about the coherence and coordination of responses, and the breadth of the involved member circuits. The coherence comes when the interactions among member circuits are synchronized. Memories, which are IFPs that get replayed, can be references for the group interactions. The group resonance of IFPs activities become "meaningful" or "understandable" when it has memory IFPs to refer to. This memory-assisted group resonance of IFPs is the focus, the consciousness, that rises up over multitudes of subconscious and unconscious, semi-coherent or noncoherent IFPs activities.
Before the age of 1 or 2, a baby lives in a dream-like subconscious state. His experiences of life are always new, with little internal memories for reference. Then, the new experiences, by associations or by repetition, become the baby's memories. And these memories serve as references and contexts for other experiences. So early-childhood memories will deeply mold a person's later perceptions and choices. It is hard to recall one's experience before the age of 2, because memory IFPs and neural circuits are still being formed at that time. Until some sequential or associative memories are established to illuminate life experiences, a baby is not that conscious or capable of remembering associatively.
Most of us can remember consciously some routines or activities from the age of 4 and older. Some people can remember as far as back as one year of age. What can't be remembered are experiences taking place subconsciously, which most activities are before the age of one. The transition from subconsciousness to consciousness, from the psyche of babies to that of toddlers, is sudden and step-like. It's like waking up from a dream, that suddenly it becomes easy to remember (some) events of the waking state, but hard to remember what has happened during the dream.
When memories and neural circuits are established in the nervous system, we become conscious of more things, or more conscious of limited number of things that can be referenced by the network of memories. If we compare a person's consciousness to subconsciousness as a ratio of neural circuits engaged in the dominant group play of IFPs to the total number of neural circuits distributed throughout the nervous system, then this ratio increases as that person becomes more conscious. The greater the ratio, the more one is conscious and less subconscious. A child is flexible and more subconscious and receptive to broad range of experiences, and a senior is rigid and more conscious and receptive to narrower range of activities.
2) differentiation
Consciousness has a memory component that provides reference for the content of awareness. In subconsciousness and unconsciousness such memory component is not well cohered with other IFPs activities. Since memory is conditioned upon experiences of the environment, so is consciousness. Consciousness will be differentiated into different species based on chance and repetitive encounters of life experiences. Some experiences will get selectively reinforced by positive feedback loops. The reinforced experiences form memories that provide the reference for later experiences. So feedback loop and memory have a selective and differentiation effect on the consciousness.
Each differentiated species of consciousness has a particular emphasis due to the biases from memory that have a selective effect. The emphasis may be of different types, like thinking or emotion or imagination or sensation. Different kinds of consciousness makes one appears to be of different characters - more strong-willed or easy-going, more selfish or altruistic. These characters are just psychological traits molded by repeated emphasis of some consciousness.
It is commonly observed that responses of different people to a single event can be different. It is said that one kind of rice can raise a hundred kinds of people. A common explanation is that people are all different. In the feedback model, the explanation is that the event is perceived differently by different people due to their different memories, which are sculpted by different life experiences reinforced in different ways.
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A viewer may notice any number of things from a picture: a woman, the kitchen, her dress, the cat, or even a craving for apple pies. What one sees is affected by the subconscious memory and thoughts etched from past experiences. The seeing of a picture is a dominant response that brings multiple subconscious thoughts together. That dominant response is what the viewer is conscious of. But there are also many details about the picture that are barely or not noticed at all by a viewer. The missing or feeble perceptions reflect what the viewer is not conscious of. The details are perceived by the viewer subconsciously or not at all.
A TV show of Martha Bakes can serve as an example. What may be some dominant or lukewarm responses of the viewers? If the response is that of not having much impression or not remembering much, then the viewer is subconscious of her baking show. If the response is strong, like "only rich people cook like that" or "I want to try that", then the viewer's consciousness is focused with imagination and emotion.
The conscious response is noted for its focus and emphasis compared to the subconsciousness. "I am going to try that recipe Martha just showed." This response is thought or goal oriented. "You can substitute that fresh raspberries with something else." That consciousness is more imaginative. What is noticed consciously can change from moment to moment, swayed by subconscious currents of thoughts or IFPs.
The responses can be combined through associations of different threads of thoughts. Then different emphases will rise and fall, and making the play of thoughts changing from moment to moment. The dominant play of the group, the consciousness, shifts from one theme to another continuously as it varies with the changing emphases. Some of the changes can take place cyclically, making that consciousness a pattern of repetition or a habit. But, with repetition, that consciousness can turn into subconsciousness, because that is a more economic way of producing responses. So habitual responses are usually automatic and subconscious.
3) complexity
Gerald Edelman has a theory of consciousness that is also based on neuronal firing activities. It is called TNGS, Theory of Neuronal Groups Selection, also known as Neural Darwinism. In that theory, higher consciousness arises from a "natural selection", which comes from reentrant signaling of neuronal maps (multitudes of complex neural circuits). By translating his terminology into ours, reentrant signaling = feedback interactions, and neuronal maps = multitudes of complex neural circuits, we will have a similar framework that can explain the complexity of consciousness. The complexity of consciousness is due to different possible ways of feedback interactions that sustain among the signal firing of neurons in neural circuits.
IFPs (impulse firing patterns) take place among neurons. Dominant IFPs can be combined as different permutations. For example, simple combinations can be s-s (sensation and sensation), or p-i (perception and imagination), or m-i (memory and imagination), and so on. greater combinations can be s-m-i, i-m-i, m-m-m. Different permutations of these combinations become diverse species of conscious awareness.
Some of the combinations will survive better than others, because they are reinforced by repetitions of similar experiences. And they become notable characteristics of the consciousness. In the Chinese language, such characteristics can be consideration/calculation (思), imagination (想), will (意), and remembering or mindfulness/concentration (念).
Imagination is a major aspect of consciousness. In Chinese it is 想, a compound word composed of 心 (mind) and 相 (appearance or form). This compound word shows that an appearance is formed in the mind. 相 is a simplified version of the word 象 (elephant). Using elephant to represent the appearance of something may have originated from the story told by the Buddha - The Elephant and the Blind Men. That story tells of some blind men arguing with each other because they have different imaginations of what an elephant is like.
Imagination not only can sketch out a physical appearance in the conscious mind, like a flying carpet or space alien, but also abstract representations like where things are or how things taste, how much reward or risk in an adventure, how to exert or compensate in an endeavor. Those ideas are all abstract representations in the imagination, conscious or subconscious. It is imagination that can project the result of an action before the action takes place. Hope, wish, thinking, fear, and many other higher consciousness are all derived from imagination.
Imagination can be abstract because information represented by IFPs can be of different levels in different neuronal layers. By combining different levels of information, imagination can be created like combinatorics. Roughly there are three types of combinations: blending (fusion), weaving, and substituting. Here are some examples.
Blending: A flying carpet in the Arabian Nights story is an image of a carpet blended in an image of the sky. A Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake figure on a ballet stage is a perception of a costumed dancer blended together with memory or imagination of a swan's movement.
Weaving: a baseball player hits a ball thrown at him by using weaved imagination. This imagination weaves one after another the perception and memory of the pitcher's pitch, the moving ball, and memory of past hitting practices. The weaved imagination projects for the hitter where the ball will be, and how to swing the bat to hit it. The memory is a guide for the projection. It is abstracted from past practices, about how to make swinging adjustments relative to the ball's likely trajectory.
The consciousness of a person reading a book weaves back and forth between the story and his surrounding.
Substituting: Strands of thoughts are combined by having one strand substituted by another, then another, in succession. A dream is like that. A stream of consciousness during a sitting meditation is like that also.
A dream story: "...I was driving a car. Next to me sits a beautiful girl. We came to a hotel by the seaside, and went inside to the restaurant there. A group of news reporters came to our table and started talking the girl. I realized they are interested in dating her..."
In this story, the imagination starts with a car, substituted by a girl, substituted by a place, substituted by unwelcomed intruders, and so on.
The Mexican burrito is a Chinese egg roll substituted by Mexican ingredients. The perception of the word "cat" may be substituted with memory of that animal. A new manager of a company is a substitute of the old manager.
4) reproduction
Some claim that life memories of a deceased person can be reproduced in a new body through reincarnation. Whether such reproduction can really happen or not depends on who you talk to. But some aspects of consciousness such as language and social customs or spirituality do get reproduced, from one person to another and from one generation to the next. This reproduction of certain consciousness is done by education, which is a feedback process where the teacher component acts in a complementary way to facilitate structural rearrangement of the learner component. The rearranged learner component in turn promotes further complementary actions from the teacher component.
With or without education, conscious thoughts and behaviors in a person must evolve from scratch at birth. Those that go through education will bear some resemblance to their teachers. And those who do not will unlikely bear resemblance and evolve very differently.
When a person reads Darwin's Theory of Evolution and assimilates it, then a part of Darwin's consciousness becomes reincarnated in the reader's brain. Emotions, like love or hate of certain things, can also be reproduced from one person to another. It is not reproduced through language or instructions but by actions. Those who were loved by their parents will likely love their own children. Those beaten by their parent(s) will likely beat others. Some reproduce the emotion and behavior they receive and some don't. If the reproduction happens, it is developed though reinforcement. The recipients who repeat certain behaviors do so because they find advantage or motivation for doing so.
The reproduction of consciousness require neural circuits of necessary and sufficient complexity. Chuang Tzu once told a story of butterfly. He dreamed of being a butterfly flitting about freely. When awakened, he wondered if he had dreamed of being a butterfly, or if a butterfly had dreamed of being Chuang Tzu. It is a story popular for its poetic beauty to some Chinese. But neurologically it is questionable that butterflies can be aware of the difference between dreaming and awakeness. Knowing such a difference requires a consciousness involving memory and consideration that adult humans have, but animals and young babies with less developed nervous systems have not. Primitive animals like reptiles can not even tell what is not moving. A common tactic for a prey to avoid detection of predators is to stay still. Primitive nervous systems do not have enough neural circuits to form enough memories for abstract imaginations. But that may be built up by education through repetitions. An example of that is that pets can understand some of the words uttered by their owners. It's understanding through education and imagination.
