Gaps exists because neurons are not only the building block of the brain and the neural system, they are also cells, the basic building block of any organic lifeform. Cells existed long before any neural system (in eukaroytic and prokaryotic form). To connect neurons by synapses has the additional advantage of high flexibility and adaptivity by providing countless possible combinations that are modifiable during the "runtime" of the system, and by offering the possibility of modulation at the gaps.
Emotions in general have indeed a strong correlation to modulation, they seem to be a kind of archaic control system which evaluates situations and controls the behavior (damping undesirable behavior while amplifying desirable actions). They signal the state of the system and control it at the same time - with the help of the reward system, neural modulators and reinforcment learning. It is no accident that pleasant stimuli are commonly associated with reinforcing neural modulators as dopamine. -J. -----Original Message----- From: Russell Standish Sent: Monday, July 10, 2006 4:02 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Neurons. My guess is that the "gaps" or synapses, have a lot to do with fine tuning the amount of damping in the brain's dynamical function. It appears that brains need to operate near the "edge of chaos", and some global control system fine tuning this would be desirable. This probably explains the evolution of emotions. Phil Husband's group in Sussex have done a fair bit of work with "GasNets", which is inspired by the design, to make effective robotic controllers. Cheers ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
