[Fis] Meaning in neurosceinces

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear FIS colleagues,

This is the month of deadlines in my Institute, so I can only draft a 
few comments on the past messages.

To Maxine: the action theme is very rich, and very well acquainted and 
discussed in last decades neuroscience. Gallistel C.R: with his 
magisterial "The Organization of Action: A New Synthesis" (1980) 
heralded the new views. More recently Alain Berthoz "The Brain's Sense 
of Movement" was boldly claiming "In the beginning was the deed", "In 
principio erat actum" so replacing "verbum" (the concept) for actum the 
act. Joaquin Fuster (Cortex and Mind, 2002) also was debunking the 
traditional views on concepts, claiming instead for "cognits", with both 
perceptual sides and motor sides... One can argue a lot about that, but 
most of these visions are well grounded and fertile. Berthoz's book is 
very elegant and makes for a rewarding reading.

As for Soeren, another explicit vision of meaning comes from Gerald 
Edelman (his neural darwinism, later on "evolved" to more integrative 
views). I copy from Oliver Sacks notes (sorry if it is a little bit long):

/"With his Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (also called Neural 
Darwinism in analogy of the Darwinism in the immune system) Gerald 
Edelman presents a neurobiological theory of the mind. He and his 
colleagues at the Neurosciences Institute have been developing it over 
the past 15 years. He imagines a comprehensive theory of a dozen 
disciplines of neuroscience. The outline of the theory is as follows: /

/After birth a set of inborn values (feelings) //allows us to begin 
building the structure of the brain. The smallest entity of this 
structure is a group of neurons (map) //in which internal links 
represent our experience. Maps are then used as new building blocks and 
interconnected with links into scenes //representing what we experience 
as the present. Ever richer maps are constructed//, ultimately //maps of 
meaning//. In our search for meaning our mind develops up the 
evolutionary //ladder to consciousness//until we form the new categories 
of "past" and "future". /

/On this way, the building blocks acquire step by step more internal 
structure that can be accessed. A continuous stream of //establishing 
and testing of hypotheses//on the basis of the existing interconnections 
weakens or strengthens existing connections or builds new ones//. The 
fittest maps and connections survive (thus the name neural Darwinism). 
These maps are //dynamic //in that they are continually redrawn 
//according to our perceptions//..."//
/

To Loet: building upon the above, a disciple of Edelman, Giulio Tononi, 
has coined the term "integrated information" phi as a sort of 
informational metrics, which is based in an information theory approach 
to the structure of mapping exchanges between neural areas. Seemingly 
the values of phi beyond some threshold indicate the emergence of 
consciousness as a brain epiphenomenon ("PHI: A Voyage from the Brain to 
the Soul", 2012). The view, well built upon info theory (almost Loet's 
style), has attracted a lot of discussion, but ultimately the approach 
continues to be more structurally focused than dynamic... critics have 
argued that the phi value of a smart cell phone is nowadays quite close 
to self-consciousness.

The suggestion (to all) is to explore whether phi, rather than relating 
it to the emergence of consciousness, would relate to the emergence of 
meaning. All the fast circulating activations and inhibitions between 
neural mappings, usually involving opposing flows of neuronal "energy" 
and informational "entropy", when they finally "click" and achieve 
convergence on an optimized state, it represents the collective 
achievement of meaning. Thus, phi would be a highly dynamic, fluctuating 
indicator showing the evolution of the cascades of meaning. Let us 
imagine the thresholds pointed by Bob in ecological networks, but 
circulating at a fiendish speed (could values of phi and resilience 
indexes have similar nature?): The ecosystem of the mind...

To emphasize finally that multiple disciplines may approach meaning, but 
explaining it I think does correspond in our times to explorations like 
the above, neurodynamic. Like the biological phenomenon of heredity... 
after centuries speculating in all realms of inquiry, finally it was 
explained molecularly by Watson and Crick in 1953.

Anyhow, all of the above is very hurried, and it just points to the 
necessity of discussing in depth these exciting matters.

Best regards


--Pedro

  
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Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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