>>From: Philip Sutton >> >> Does anyone have an up-to-date fix on how much computation occurs >> (if any) within-cells (as opposed to the traditional neural net >> level) that >> are part of biolgical brain systems? ........especially in the case of >> animals that have a premium placed on the number of neurones they >> can support (eg. limited by size, weight or energy supply compared to >> the need for computational capacity).
Multicellular organisms (and their neurons) evolved from protists and therefore may have inherited some of the latter's learning abilities. I read somewhere that protists can retain some sort of molecular memories about nutrients in their environment. In the nervous systems of higher organisms neurons may communicate with each other with neuropeptides and may store information in gene activation states. But so far I'm not aware of any real evidence of such. Though I'll definitely look more into this. >From: "Ben Goertzel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > [...] > >However, the idea that this information processing plays a direct role in >human-mind-level information processing, is another hypothesis entirely. As >you probably know, Stuart Hameroff has proposed that molecular-biology >information processing in the microtubules in the cell walls of neurons, are >a key part of human cognition. Personally, I doubt it, but.... In the same >vein, I read a book a while back in which two guys named Jibu and Yasue >tried to follow up on Hameroff's ideas with a detailed theory of the >cognitive role of quantum nonlocality effects in water megamolecules in the >brain. There has probably been more work along these lines recently, but, >it's definitely highly speculative and not accepted by the bulk of the >scientific community. Hameroff's idea of quantum level computation is very unlikely because of quantum decoherence by thermal noise and also because the action potential is a *positive*feedback* mechanism that filters out fluctuations in the membrane potential. So we can quite safely rule out those possibilities. Hope this helps YKY ____________________________________________________________ Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10 ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
