The > holographic idea only had flimsy evidence based on earlier experiments on > mice and rats which showed that a learned act seemed to be scattered over > the most of the perceptual processing areas of the brain, because excisions > of cortical tissue had to be very extensive indeed before the learned act > finally vanished from the repertoire. It was supposed, therefore, that > originally there were multiple copies of the learned act scattered over > large parts of the cortex and, even when very few remained (perhaps even > only one!), then the full performance of the act could be resurrected in > rather the same way that a holographic image can be resurrected from very > small parts of the whole. However, the mice experiments were pretty crude.
I'm way out of my league on this since I haven't done any work in it since the late seventies and early eighties when I got my certification. However if you type Karl H. Pribram into Amazon.com you will find book being written on it as late as 1994 and I believe there are three including one of those expensive types that usually means its too hard for the layman. So you can find out for yourself. In the early stages they weren't only talking about brain activity and as recent as last year there was in that great scientific journal the New York Times Science section an article on brain neurons found in the gut that weren't just wanderers. I don't mean to get into a tete with Keith on this since he obviously has a lot more time to donate to it than I but it was in the NYTimes and it did fit with my experience. > Parts of the learned act are indeed to be found in different parts of the > brain but only specialised aspects of it, and if a few of those parts are > excised then the other parts can still associate together and perform the > act (albeit less skilfully). Had the experimenters excised certain other > very precise areas of the brain -- namely the motor strip that gathers > together and synthesises all the specialised aspects of the act and > instructs the muscles to perform the act as an integrated whole -- then the > learned act could not be performed at all. Indeed, over time, because the > specialised parts of the original memory of the learned act could never > again "complete the circuit", as it were, the synapses would weaken and the > neuronal cells that were dedicated to the particular act would die from > disuse. > > Here's another example based on the "grannie cell" approach. You and I will > have multiple instances of the concept of tomato scattered all over our > cortex, each with varying proportions of perceptual speciality and at > different levels of processing according to the inputs that are usually > involved when faced with a tomato and eating it or even throwing it at your > least favourite politician (visual, taste, tactility, etc.) However, it > would be possible that if either of us had a small stroke in a > microscopically small area of the Wernicke's areas of the brain (perhaps > only involving two or three cells perhaps) then the ability to utter the > word "tomato" will have gone for good. You would be able to remember that a > tomato was pleasant to eat. You would be able to choose a tomato from a > pile of other fruit when asked to. But if you were asked the name of a > tomato sitting on a plate in front of you would not be able to answer. You > would not even "know" the answer. You would shake your head in puzzlement > as though you'd never seen one before. However, if you were then > instructed: "Pick up the tomato from the plate", you would be able to do so > instantly. (This is similar to experiences that occur to tens of thousands > of people every year when they have had minor strokes so it is not a > fanciful example.) So this example is an attempt to describe the phenomenon > that some thought was holographic. Does the description of a unique synapse mean that the map for the human being is not contained on a micro-level? I don't know, its not my area of expertise. On the other hand there are junction models found in all kinds of systems. I have no doubt that in the future there will be some kind of "miracle" healing of what Keith describes. It would have been wonderful for my own mother, for example. However, I don't believe that what he has described is the be all and end all of this question. I also figure that Karl Pribram knows a great deal more than either of us will ever know about it as well. Things that seem simple to the amateurs become a great deal more complicated as informational expertise is added and Pribram is a World Master on this stuff. Again I will mention that Pribram is very much alive as is his theory. I typed his name into Google and found him thriving which pleases me. I also scanned (in a very rudimentary manner) the following http://www.acsa2000.net/bcngroup/jponkp/ which seems to be the comparison that Keith was making. One of the conclusions said a simple "ain't necessarily so" to Keith's tomato argument. But I will leave this now and recommend that you use the Google search engine if you wish to examine this interesting theory further. Best Ray Evans Harrell
