List, Here is something that resonates with my "bucket of bugs" (BOB) thesis (analogous to the container housing bees that we call a beehive): http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/biologists_discover_bacteria_communica te_like_neurons_in_the_brain
What BOB suggests is this: 1. The functional specialisations in the brain are not established in any DNA "blueprint." Neurons/glia are individual, autonomous critters just like bacteria are, and this implies that the functional specialisations of the brain arise not from any genocentric blueprint, but from social experience (complex adaptive systems are dynamic and social). Just like cities of people do; 2. Bugs, like people, have to "know how to be"; 3. In accordance with the principle of neuroplasticity, the brain starts "wiring" itself (apologies for the infotech terminology... that's not my doing) pretty much from the moment of conception, like when neurons begin to experience heart-muscle demands, for example, to set the development of the medulla oblongata; 4. The idea that experience wires the neuroplastic brain was given a boost in Norman Doidge's book "The brain that changes itself"; 5. The role of DNA needs to be seriously re-examined... existing infotech narratives have long exceeded their use-by date; 6. Of course this relates to semiotics and biosemiotics and the role of meaning in wiring [ugh, that word again] the neuroplastic brain. sj
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