The self (the amygdala) and the triune brain

[Roger Clough]

 

 

The self (the amygdala) and the triune brain

 

Since neuroscience omits or seems not to feature the most important part of the brain, the self,

I've decided to try to locate it. I believe it is the amygdala.

 

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KY_sgX2gAMY/Tg1zrbUs_fI/AAAAAAAAAfM/-XBfGi_O0RU/s1600/triune%2Bbrain.gif

 

 

 

 

The amygdala is a small brain organ which is not pictured in the above diagram

but is in the center of the reptelian brain in the above diagram. In fact it is at the

well-protected center of the entire brain, where common sense, overall access to

brain functions, and necessary survival tells you it ought to be.  Its function is to alert

you to anything dangerous in your path such as a snake. Thus it must have

two functions, a cognitive one to tell a branch from a snake, and

an affective one (fear) to cause you to jump back from the snake.

 

amygdala = cognitive + affective

 

Although neuroscience does not consider consciousness to be a dipole as below:

 

Cs = subject + object

 

 

It is a logical necessity. My suggestion is that the subject is the amygdala

and the object is any needed part of the brain (you can find maps of these

through Google.

 

In this model, consciousness is at the bottom based on feelings,

such as the sense of passing time,or self-centered fear. Above or beyond are

the cognitive functions necessary for thinking and image perception.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net

9/11/2012

Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him

so that everything could function."

[Alberto G. Corona]

The idea of looking for a spatio-temporal location of the mental (or soul) categories in the brain is wrong IHMO, and it is surprising to heart this from you Roger. Brain localization of mental functions is like trying to locate physically the spell checker of a word processor in the hardware of a personal computer. The spell checker uses most of the hardware.

But there are low level computer functions that are physically located, such are the floating point unit, the memory transfer unit etc.  There are a parallelism in the brain:  IHMO there is a confusion between very specialized functions, like sensory processing, which are localized for reasons of processing efficiency and wider, higuer level functions like the self, which are not subject to this restriction. As far as i know, the amygdala is part of these efficiency-constrained parts of the brain. For this reason it is almost a separate organ. It is in charge of  early processing of sensory data to trigger rapid responses before they are consciously analysed.

2012/9/11 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

[Roger Clough]

 

 

Hi Albert,

 

They commonly use IMRI (which detects which parts of the brain are operating

at the moment) to find which parts of the brakin function at certain times.

They find that introspective reflection turns on an areas in

the prefrontal cortex: 

http://www.healthimaging.com/index.php?option=com_articles&view=article&id=24144:study-mri-sheds-light-on-introspective-qualities

Study: MRI sheds light on introspective qualities

The whole concept of the triune brain shows that certain broad areas of the

brain show 1 of 3 functions. reptilian, limbic, cortex or thought.

My suggestion is that the amygdala is the center and perceiver of these activities

just from the brain map.

 

 

 

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net

9/11/2012

Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him

so that everything could function."

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Alberto G. Corona

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-09-11, 07:33:36

Subject: Re: The self (the amygdala) and the triune brain

The idea of looking for a spatio-temporal location of the mental (or soul) categories in the brain is wrong IHMO, and it is surprising to heart this from you Roger. Brain localization of mental functions is like trying to locate physically the spell checker of a word processor in the hardware of a personal computer. The spell checker uses most of the hardware.

But there are low level computer functions that are physically located, such are the floating point unit, the memory transfer unit etc. 锟絋here are a parallelism in the brain: 锟絀HMO there is a confusion between very specialized functions, like sensory processing, which are localized for reasons of processing efficiency and wider, higuer level functions like the self, which are not subject to this restriction. As far as i know, the amygdala is part of these efficiency-constrained parts of the brain. For this reason it is almost a separate organ. It is in charge of 锟絜arly processing of sensory data to trigger rapid responses before they are consciously锟絘nalysed.

2012/9/11 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>

�

�

The self (the amygdala)锟絘nd the triune brain

�

Since neuroscience omits or seems not to feature the most important part of the brain, the self,

I've decided to try to locate it. I believe it is the amygdala.

�

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KY_sgX2gAMY/Tg1zrbUs_fI/AAAAAAAAAfM/-XBfGi_O0RU/s1600/triune%2Bbrain.gif

�

�

�

�

The amygdala is a small brain organ which is not pictured in the above diagram

but is in the center of the reptelian brain in the above diagram.锟絀n fact it is at the

well-protected center of the entire brain, where common sense, overall access to

brain functions,锟絘nd necessary�survival tells you it ought to be. 锟絀ts function is to alert

you to anything dangerous in your path such as a snake. Thus it must have

two functions, a cognitive one to tell a branch from a snake, and

an affective one (fear) to cause you to jump back from the snake.

�

amygdala = cognitive + affective

�

Although neuroscience does not consider consciousness to be a dipole as below:

�

Cs = subject + object

�

�

It is a logical necessity. My suggestion is that the subject is the amygdala

and the object is any needed part of the brain (you can find maps of these

through Google.

�

In this model, consciousness is at the bottom based on feelings,

such as the sense of passing time,or self-centered fear. Above or beyond锟絘re

the cognitive functions necessary for thinking and image perception.

�

�

�

�

�

�

�

�

�

�

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net

9/11/2012

Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him

so that everything could function."

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

[Craig Weinberg]

Nah, the function of the amygdala only contributes one range of sense and motive to the self.

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2010/12/16/brain-anomaly-leaves-woman-without-fear

This woman has no amygdala, but besides not being able to experience or act out of fear, "she is otherwise cognitively typical and experiences other emotions such as happiness and sadness."

The self is orthogonal to it's shadows (brain, body, cells, clothes, house, planet). The self is a lifetime. It is an experience of significance through time, nothing more or less.

[Roger Clough]

Hi Craig Weinberg

 

 

Her amygdala was damaged, not removed.

It would be interesting to study a person who lost or never

had an amygdala.

 

My thinking on the amygdala as self is that it

is so very, very basic, as self mnust be.

The possibility of fear fight-or-flight  is about as basic

as you can get, as well as for fighting.

You need a sense of self in order to fight .

 

 

Even reptiles have to have some

sort of sense of self to avoid enemies.

So it would be iunteresting to see what hapopens if the

amygdala is totally removed from a mouse or snake.

 

 

 

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net

9/11/2012

Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him

so that everything could function."

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Craig Weinberg

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-09-11, 08:30:14

Subject: Re: The self (the amygdala) and the triune brain

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/sHOCiL_SZMwJ.

[Craig Weinberg]

Hi Roger,

No, that is not what the article says:

"Researchers who have studied a woman with a missing amygdala"

"S.M. suffers from an extremely rare disease that destroyed her amygdala."

It's as straightforward as it can be. The idea that the amygala constitutes the entire experience of selfhood is not supported in any way.

Craig

[Craig Weinberg]

Roger,

I do see other articles where that patient SM is described as having amygdala lesions, but the animal studies out there don't make any distinction between the results of amygdala lesions and amygdala removal. Either way, it seems the amygdala doesn't function.

On Tuesday, September 11, 2012 8:49:23 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote:

 

My thinking on the amygdala as self is that it

is so very, very basic, as self mnust be.

The possibility of fear fight-or-flight  is about as basic

as you can get, as well as for fighting.

You need a sense of self in order to fight .

I would think that pain and pleasure would be much more primitive than processing fear and uncertainty. In order to be afraid, you have to have something to be afraid of. Unpleasant feelings and sensations. What makes them unpleasant? Only organisms that can move their bodies need to have fight or flight responses, and there is more evidence to suggest that plants communicate, which I would consider likely an intelligence of a sort.
 

 

 

Even reptiles have to have some

sort of sense of self to avoid enemies.

So it would be iunteresting to see what hapopens if the

amygdala is totally removed from a mouse or snake.

What happens is they go about their business as usual, except they'll walk right up to a predator and start trying to nibble on it.

"We present evidence indicating that the rodent amygdala is involved in some types of fear (conditioned fear), but not all types (unconditioned fear), "

http://people.usd.edu/~cliff/Courses/Advanced%20Seminars%20in%20Neuroendocrinology/fear/Rosen06.pdf

Here's a study on monkeys "These findings are consistent with the results of our studies in nonhuman primates in that removal of the amygdala produced animals that were less fearful of inanimate objects as well as other monkeys. " -

The Amygdala, Autism and Anxiety  (novartis_paper_6-12-02)

[Bruno Marchal]

On 11 Sep 2012, at 13:05, Roger Clough wrote:

 

 

The self (the amygdala) and the triune brain

 

Since neuroscience omits or seems not to feature the most important part of the brain, the self,

I've decided to try to locate it. I believe it is the amygdala.

 

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KY_sgX2gAMY/Tg1zrbUs_fI/AAAAAAAAAfM/-XBfGi_O0RU/s1600/triune%2Bbrain.gif

 

 

 

<amygdala triune brain.png>

 

The amygdala is a small brain organ which is not pictured in the above diagram

but is in the center of the reptelian brain in the above diagram. In fact it is at the

well-protected center of the entire brain, where common sense, overall access to

brain functions, and necessary survival tells you it ought to be.  Its function is to alert

you to anything dangerous in your path such as a snake. Thus it must have

two functions, a cognitive one to tell a branch from a snake, and

an affective one (fear) to cause you to jump back from the snake.

 

amygdala = cognitive + affective

 

Although neuroscience does not consider consciousness to be a dipole as below:

 

Cs = subject + object

 

 

It is a logical necessity. My suggestion is that the subject is the amygdala

and the object is any needed part of the brain (you can find maps of these

through Google.

 

In this model, consciousness is at the bottom based on feelings,

such as the sense of passing time,or self-centered fear. Above or beyond are

the cognitive functions necessary for thinking and image perception.

I find this plausible for consciousness, but not for the self, which in my opinion might be related more to a cycle of information going through both the neocortex, and the cerebral stem. That would fit better Hobson theory of dreams, and computationalism. But that's speculation 'course.

Bruno

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net

9/11/2012

Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him

so that everything could function."

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Bruno Marchal]

On 11 Sep 2012, at 13:33, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

The idea of looking for a spatio-temporal location of the mental (or soul) categories in the brain is wrong IHMO, and it is surprising to heart this from you Roger. Brain localization of mental functions is like trying to locate physically the spell checker of a word processor in the hardware of a personal computer. The spell checker uses most of the hardware.

But there are low level computer functions that are physically located, such are the floating point unit, the memory transfer unit etc.  There are a parallelism in the brain:  IHMO there is a confusion between very specialized functions, like sensory processing, which are localized for reasons of processing efficiency and wider, higuer level functions like the self, which are not subject to this restriction. As far as i know, the amygdala is part of these efficiency-constrained parts of the brain. For this reason it is almost a separate organ. It is in charge of  early processing of sensory data to trigger rapid responses before they are consciously analysed.

You can't locate the first person mind, but you can locate relatively to you the 3p modules responsible for the relative (to you) manifestation of that mind. 

In fine, that local 3p is only an 1p-plural due to the 1p indeterminacy on all the arithmetical realization of those manifestation, so the "exact 3p picture" is more complex, and involves infinities of computations.

Bruno

2012/9/11 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>

 

 

The self (the amygdala) and the triune brain

 

Since neuroscience omits or seems not to feature the most important part of the brain, the self,

I've decided to try to locate it. I believe it is the amygdala.

 

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KY_sgX2gAMY/Tg1zrbUs_fI/AAAAAAAAAfM/-XBfGi_O0RU/s1600/triune%2Bbrain.gif

 

 

 

<amygdala triune brain.png>

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Bruno Marchal]

On 11 Sep 2012, at 15:04, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Hi Roger,

No, that is not what the article says:

"Researchers who have studied a woman with a missing amygdala"

"S.M. suffers from an extremely rare disease that destroyed her amygdala."

It's as straightforward as it can be. The idea that the amygala constitutes the entire experience of selfhood is not supported in any way.

She lost "only" fear apparently. She will have to be cautious "manually" so to speak. She might need the fear of others to survive.

Bruno

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/zDdpF0cyFSgJ.

To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Stephen P. King]

Dear Bruno,

Could the 3p be defined as a closed and open (clopen) set of many
1p's, where each 1p is the intersection (or somethign similar) of an
infinity of computations?

--
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

[Craig Weinberg]

On Tuesday, September 11, 2012 2:12:44 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 11 Sep 2012, at 15:04, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Hi Roger,

No, that is not what the article says:

"Researchers who have studied a woman with a missing amygdala"

"S.M. suffers from an extremely rare disease that destroyed her amygdala."

It's as straightforward as it can be. The idea that the amygala constitutes the entire experience of selfhood is not supported in any way.

She lost "only" fear apparently. She will have to be cautious "manually" so to speak. She might need the fear of others to survive.

Bruno

Yes. That other link talks a bit about experiments suggesting that it may only be conditioned fear rather than all forms of fear. This combined with the studies linking the amygdala to gambling and thrill seeking addictions makes me think that is plays an important but fairly specific role of managing risky and rewarding experiences.

Everything that I have read about the brain and neuroscience seems to point to a system which is more resilient and less mechanistic than we would imagine. Patients have had half of their brain removed and been relatively unscathed. Unlike a computer, entire modules can be destroyed without halting the program. It's what I would expect from a live organ made of living micororganisms.

Craig

[Roger Clough]

Hi Bruno Marchal

 

Self can include personality, history, ID, whatever,

but it has as its central, essential feature a point of focus

which is a unity: a substance, to use Leibniz's

vocabulary.

 

 

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net

9/12/2012

Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him

so that everything could function."

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Bruno Marchal

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-09-11, 11:52:31

Subject: Re: The self (the amygdala) and the triune brain

[Roger Clough]

Hi Bruno Marchal

 

Thanks.

 

 

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net

9/12/2012

Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him

so that everything could function."

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Bruno Marchal

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-09-11, 13:25:05

Subject: Re: The self (the amygdala) and the triune brain

[Bruno Marchal]

On 12 Sep 2012, at 12:03, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Bruno Marchal

 

Self can include personality, history, ID, whatever,

but it has as its central, essential feature a point of focus

which is a unity: a substance, to use Leibniz's

vocabulary.

Which is not the "substance" is the materialist sense. OK.

The unity of self can be explained by the way we can make a soft, immaterial entity, having a self. No need to postulate more than numbers and elementary operations. 

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Roger Clough]

Hi Bruno Marchal

If the self or the perceiver is a substance in the Leibniz sense,
then it is also a monad. Monads (such as me) do not perceive
directly, but must "wait" (although actually it's instant) until the Supreme
Monad does the observation for it and reports back.
As I understand it, the Supreme Monad is not God, but
what God sees and acts through.

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/12/2012
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him
so that everything could function."
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-09-12, 06:29:20

Subject: Re: The self (the amygdala) and the triune brain




On 12 Sep 2012, at 12:03, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

Self can include personality, history, ID, whatever,
but it has as its central, essential feature a point of focus
which is a unity: a substance, to use Leibniz's
vocabulary.


Which is not the "substance" is the materialist sense. OK.
The unity of self can be explained by the way we can make a soft, immaterial entity, having a self. No need to postulate more than numbers and elementary operations.


Bruno








Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/12/2012
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him
so that everything could function."
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-11, 11:52:31
Subject: Re: The self (the amygdala) and the triune brain




On 11 Sep 2012, at 13:05, Roger Clough wrote:




The self (the amygdala) and the triune brain

Since neuroscience omits or seems not to feature the most important part of the brain, the self,
I've decided to try to locate it. I believe it is the amygdala.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KY_sgX2gAMY/Tg1zrbUs_fI/AAAAAAAAAfM/-XBfGi_O0RU/s1600/triune%2Bbrain.gif