Last week's Science reports on studies which induced mice to act as if they were hallucinating a sound.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6537/33 The ability to detect external stimuli rapidly and accurately by building > internal sensory representations is a central computation of the brain that > is critical to guide behavior. Such expectations (or priors) may be > acquired throughout the lifetime of an individual and are important to > influence perception, particularly when incoming sensory signals are > ambiguous (*1* <https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6537/33#ref-1>). > But this process is not exempt from failure. Hallucinations (perceptual > experiences without external stimuli) seen in conditions such as > schizophrenia are thought to result from giving too much weight to priors, > creating an imbalance at the expense of actual sensory evidence (*2* > <https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6537/33#ref-2>, *3* > <https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6537/33#ref-3>). Sustained > high-dopamine tone in the striatum has been proposed to contribute to this > imbalance (*4* <https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6537/33#ref-4>); > however, it has remained unclear how the dopaminergic perturbation leads to > the generation of hallucinations. On page 51 of this issue, Schmack *et > al.* (*5* <https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6537/33#ref-5>) > uncover the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie dopamine-dependent > auditory hallucinatory states, with therapeutic implications. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6537/eabf4740?ijkey=dc959050f9aca2a9b59af202ba146edea5fc22c7&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha INTRODUCTION > Psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia impose enormous human, social, > and economic burdens. The prognosis of psychotic disorders has not > substantially improved over the past decades because our understanding of > the underlying neurobiology has remained stagnant. Indeed, the subjective > nature of hallucinations, a defining symptom of psychosis, presents an > enduring challenge for their rigorous study in humans and translation to > preclinical animal models. Here, we developed a cross-species computational > psychiatry approach to directly relate human and rodent behavior and used > this approach to study the neural basis of hallucination-like perception in > mice. -- rec -- On Mon, Apr 5, 2021 at 4:07 PM Steve Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > Marcus - > > I think the least plausible of these is the think-yourself-happy > approach. If it always worked, that would be Free Will. Mind over matter. > > This is quite familiar to my own operational logic. I tend toward > trick-yourself-happy with things like "I can always procrastinate later" to > break a procrastination rut for example. I'm experimenting (without any > controls or even a plan) on my (struggling) 26 year old nephew by offering > him a series of "trick-yourself-out-of-unhappy-or-inaction" tricks that I > have gathered (by bouncing through a life). So far, his resistance (my > Sister's family's classic I-cant-because) has held firm, but I trust some > of the seeds of my cult-deprogramming are getting through even if they > haven't sprouted yet. I follow what I take to be a stylization of Glen's > (likely?) prescription which is to change my habits and my internal state > will follow (with some exponential moving average?). A friend used to call > this "acting as if". > > I don’t see machines all the way down and panconsciousness at odds. Open > source software. > > I suppose the question begged by ORCH-AR (Penrose-Hameroff) and Poised > Realm (Kauffman) or Neuronal Superposition (Pearce hisself) and others is > whether "all the way down is qualitatively different for sufficiently large > values of 'down' ? " at which point something magical/mystical/mythical > happens and "viola!" Consciousness! > > And you are probably much better able to explain why a "quantum machine" > is qualitatively different (or not) than a classical machine? > > - Steve > > > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ >
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