Brain - mind - emotions
Chapter 1 - Worldview
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Welcome to the Brain - mind - emotions page
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Theory of constructed emotions
On this page, we present you with a constructive view on human behaviour as developed by Lisa Feldman Barrett.
- The mind is what the brain is doing (at a particular moment in time): a set of psychological and experiential mental features.
- You are your brain and your brain constructs mental features. Those mental features are your mind (at that moment).
| The theory of constructed emotion posits that if one changes their concepts about a subject that this would lead to constructing different emotions/feelings regarding that subject. Barrett’s theory offers an explanation of how these new concepts can create new emotional (feeling) responses. The implication is that the value of “thinking systems” is that it will create new emotional responses that will support improved functioning. (1) |
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| (1) | Dave Galloway |
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The uniqueness of an individual: structural connectome
- You can use the brain structural connectome to identify an individual at birth
- In contrast, the functional connectivity is less stable and cannot be used as a fingerprint
The information in an individual's structural connectome is highly specific to that person and can act as a personal 'fingerprint' (Finn et al., 2015; Yeh et al., 2016).
Our observations suggest that by the normal time of birth, an individual's brain structural connectome is relatively stable. This indicates that the individual template of structural connectivity is predominately genetically determined in the absence of an external insult. Consistent with this, macroscale structural white matter tractography has been shown to be highly heritable with axial diffusivity, radial diffusivity and fractional anisotropy of commissural fibres found to have the highest genetic influence and association fibres the least (Lee et al., 2015).
The brain structural connectome fingerprint is already present in the perinatal period. It is relatively stable and individually unique at this stage of development.
At the same time, the identification features of functional connectivity appear more complex to interpret, potentially too dynamic or immature to provide a fingerprint. Region-wise analysis suggested that the functional fingerprint in early development might be more stable within clusters, although identifiability rates were still higher for structural data.
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| The developing brain structural and functional connectome fingerprint - Judit Ciarrusta - Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience - 2022 |
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Cognitive abilities
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Understanding the human brain remains the major challenge of biological sciences. We present a framework that pursues this biologically grounded inquiry of the mechanisms underlying human cognitive ability. We propose a computational model of an elaborate multilevel neural network able to pass cognitive tasks of increasing difficulty (Fig.).The three different levels of structural organisation show the increasing complexity of connectomic architecture with each nested level through a continuous progression.
- The first level, which we refer to as the “sensorimotor level,” deals with local sensory processing and classification of visual information. It requires local synaptic epigenesis.
- At the second level, or “cognitive level”, the network successfully passes a delay conditioning task: It mobilizes multiple cortical areas, and their integration requires long-range axonal connections.
- The third level, referred to as the “conscious level,” is able to carry a trace conditioning task using an architecture similar to the cognitive level, yet with the addition of the necessary contribution of inhibitory interneurons. And, even though inhibitory neurons are present not only at the highest level of brain organization, we are showing that they are a necessary requirement at this particular step. The conscious level can be further linked to constant interactions with the social and cultural environment and form a so-called metacognitive level.
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| Multilevel development of cognitive abilities in an artificial neural network - Guillaume Dumas - PSYCHOLOGICAL AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES - PNAS - 2022 |
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Key take-aways from the deep dive
- Your brain is fine-tuned for utility, not for ‘reality’
- Its most basic function is movement
- Internal oriented functions are interoception and predictive regulation
- Remarquabel (external oriented) properties are the ability to change and mutual regulation
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Deep dive
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What is the brain for?
Movement
There is only one reason why there is a brain: movement. A movement towards other things, simply speaking, action. For example, some creatures born with brains in the sea who eat their brains when they settle and start a sedentary life. Life on earth that can't move doesn't have brains.
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| Daniel Wolpert - Professor of Neurobiology at Columbia University. |
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What is the brain's most remarkable feature?
Change
Brains are designed to change according to the action's result—their modus operandi. They change massively with child and adolescent development: roughly half the synapses in the cortex literally disappear between birth and adulthood. They also change with learning throughout the lifespan, acquiring new skills, from taxi driving to music appreciation, and with normal ageing.
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The concepts that shape your brain
Interoception
A primary concept is intereoception. Interoception is generally referred to as "the perception of internal body states," although many interoceptive processes are not consciously perceived. Importantly, interoception is made possible by "integrating the information from inside the body into the central nervous system". Interoception is the fundament of the modern view on allostasis and allostatic load. The regulatory model of allostasis claims that the brain's primary role as an organ is the predictive regulation of internal sensations. Predictive regulation (allostatis) is the brain's ability to anticipate needs and prepare to fulfil them before they arise. In this model, the brain is responsible for the efficient regulation of its internal milieu.
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Predictive regulation
Brain-centred predictive regulation – starts with a hypothalamic clock that synchronises clocks in every tissue. On this diurnal cycle of metabolic variation, the brain superimposes an episodic rest–activity cycle that coordinates change in critical systems (respiration, heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, and physical activity). The brain predicts upcoming needs for food, water, salt, warmth, or cooling and satisfies them by adjusting physiology and behaviour to prevent errors that would require homeostatic correction.
The brain, sensing the internal and external milieu and consulting its database, predicts what will likely be needed and computes the best response. The brain rewards a better-than-predicted result with a pulse of dopamine, thereby encouraging the organism to learn effective regulatory behaviours. By prioritisings behaviours and dynamically adjusting the flow of energy and nutrients, the brain reduces costly errors and exploits more opportunities. Despite significant computation costs, allostasis pays off and can now be recognised as a core principle of organismal design.
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| Allostasis: A Brain-Centered, Predictive Mode |
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Our senses & brains are fine-tuned for utility, not for ‘reality’
It’s easy to mistake our conscious experience for an ongoing, accurate account of reality. After all, the information we recover from our senses is the only window we’ll ever have into the outside world. And for most people, our perception certainly feels real most of the time. But the notion that our senses capture an objective external reality can be dispelled by considering something as fundamental as colour, which can be culturally influenced and, even within a single culture, leave the population split between seeing the same picture of a dress as black-and-blue or white-and-gold.
| External links |
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| Anil Seth, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience |
| The real problem |
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Mutual regulation
There is strong evidence that we mutualy regulate each other brains (and bodies).
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Want to know more?
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| Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain |
| Extended notes for Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain |
| How Emotions are Made |
| Extended endnotes for How Emotions are Made |
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