[Meta] I wish there were more discussion of my posts, my main goal has
been to try to stimulate good discusisons of and feedback about the
topics I'm bringing up... []
Ok, we haz DNA...
DNA gives us pritines and also contains some features for RNA-based
enzymes and regulatory sequences so that the entire set of molecules
behaves like a state machine on top of the encoding functions. (see
epigenetics and DNA regulatory functions.)
From here we must get to a complete nervous system capable of operating
a body, and meeting the needs of keeping it safe, clean, fed, and
successfully mate and and rear offspring.
There are at least three levels of behavior modulators in the brain.
The simplest are reflex actions. These are highly stereotyped behaviors
that can be triggered when certain criteria are met. Laughter, crying,
gaging, all of these are reflexes.
The next level are more complex, such sex drive, courtship behaviors,
hunting, housekeeping, all of these are behaviors that are based on
specific "neuclei" (nodules of gray matter) in the hypothalamus and
midbrain.
There are also learned responses where emotional responses can be tied
to complex learned behaviors, the neural modules for this is is in the
amigdalas. These have a direct neural connection to the hypothalamus.
This is how you learn to have (positive or negative) reactions to
specific ppl/places/things, etc.
Today, I'm going to be focusing on the hypothalamus.
Each of the hypothalamic neuclei are roughly on the order of 1e5
neuronns. How these are patterned to produce fairly reliable behavior
patterns is somewhat of a marvel. Now the basic output of these modules
is to either directly affect the brain's internal "reward pathways" or
to indirectly trigger a physiological sensation related to what the
subject of the behavior module is trying to accomplish. What these
modules take as input and how it is processed is somewhat obscure,
(IDK). In lower animals, these sensations will probably trigger reflexes
in those physiological targets and thus produce behaviors. In mammals,
there is an entire motovational system dedicated to play, which is a
training mode that has a huge array of social and psychological effects
on brain and psychological development.
When you see kids playing house, or "cops and robbers" and such, what
they're really doing is learning the parameters of their instinctual
modules and tying them into how their bodies work (keeping in mind that
these modules could be conserved across thousands of generations with
evolving hardware), as well as the physical environment and the
surrounding culture.
The effect of the instinctual brain modules is that the child is
motivated to learn essential life skills. I expect very large overlap in
play activities across cultures.
So what these modules do is encode very vague/simplistic constraints and
then these are "solved" in sort of a prolog-style way by the higher
brain regions, namely the cortex and the CTC loop I talked about yesterday.
Disorders such as sociopathy and personality disorders probably result
from mutations where these instinctual modules are either missing or use
the wrong neurotransmitter where instead of producing a
depressive/negitive response to something bad happening, it is processed
with a stimulative response.
https://www.intechopen.com/books/hypothalamus-in-health-and-diseases/anatomy-and-function-of-the-hypothalamus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midbrain
https://www.google.com/search?q=neuroscience+play+and+brain+development
<https://www.google.com/search?q=neuroscience+play+and+brain+development&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiS_87j0-TjAhUEy1kKHWSwACMQ1QIoAHoECAoQAQ>
--
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Funny money comes from the FED
so NO FED -> NO CLOWNS!!!
Powers are not rights.
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Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI
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