Barry may have a fuller and different answer to Charlie. And maybe technology is even better than that which I describe below. Although I am suspecting we have not crossed those limits yet.
As far as I am aware most imaging technology uses physiological correspondents to any 'work' being done by the underlying structures - here neurones (nerve cells). Each iota of work requires a quantum of energy - for the brain that is oxygen. It is delivered in the form of oxyhemoglobin, as conveyed by the blood stream. What the resulting image consists of a is potentially a microsecond by microsecond of blood flow, and its changes - as the subject (the human whose brain is being evaluated) is asked to perform a task. You can go one step farther. If one injects an 'isotype' chemical signal (thus 'mark-able' either naturally or by adding on a wee flag) that gets picked up by the brain to serve as a 'flash' of a metabolically active process, you can get a map of where oxygen is utilized. That signal acts as a marker of where the work-action is being performed; work here being transformation of the oxygen into a cellular momentary store (as 'ATP') in the mitochondria (equatable to an energy pumping station). Those two - regional blood flow and energy signalling - can locate where that process you describe is happening. But whether that process is 'built' up as you describe is what the original paper tries to break down. This even with the work as described by the article sent by Barry, there is an inferential step to take - does that physiological process match the postulated sub-structure of the task that the human whose brain is being imaged? The article doesn't give the level of detail perhaps needed to answer that. And of course that is not the function of that particular article. BTW Barry , thx very much for the article - I would definitely not likely easily have seen it without your posting. Some while back (I cannot recall the message # and I have no time now to re-trace it) I suggested that a book somewhat critically evaluated the modern lingo-linguistic philosophical basis of Chomsky. I quoted bits of it if I recall. It was written by Chris Knight 'Decoding Chomsky'. While the book traces some of the Chomsky's politics, a sizeable chunk challenges the philosophical underpinnings. At that time I wrote, it met with some rejecting comments on this list. I think those were driven by admiration of Chomsky's more well known (and brave) politics. Whatever his more general global politics (good on the whole), his philosophical underpinnings on language, need more critical review. I had hoped to take that on, but I got a wee bogged down then. H -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#33034): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/33034 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/109108434/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: marxmail+ow...@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
