intuition pumps / research notebook

The half-lesson: Your Brain Is Not For Thinking

Myth: The human brain's primary function is thinking through things logically to weigh options / come up with solutions / etc.

More accurate: The brain's primary objective is resource allocation / management. Allostasis -- thought processes, the experience of emotions, etc. are in service of this?

Lesson 1: You have One Brain ( Not Three )**

Barrett discusses the myth of the triune brain, formalized in the mid-twentieth century by Paul MacLean, who was working with the tools we had at the time, visual inspection. He saw parts in human brains that appeared to match parts of lizard brains, parts of mouse brains, etc. and determined that the parts that didn't match in appearance were unique to our species. Now, we have the ability to see neurons and can see that they're genetically similar across species. The difference appears to be the time allocated to the development of each "part" of the brain (revisit this). With mouse instructions, x amount of time is spent on Y formation and this makes mouse brain. In humans, x-times-whatever-multiplier is spent on Y formation, which leads to new parts of brain growth and the function of neurons is re-allocated to different parts and you have a more complex human brain. Note that the idea that humans have a huge neocortex is false. Proportionally, considering time allocated to its development, it's normal / on par with other animals.

Ex. there are common brain-manufacturing plans and they are all the same and they run processes. For different animals, each part of the manufacturing process runs for a specific amount of time and this is what produces different creature brains. ???

The misunderstandings described led to the misnaming of the neocortex in humans (it's not new) and to the misconception that humans have a three-part brain: "lizard brain" (survival) / limbic system (emotion) and neocortex (reason).

The Triune Brain Myth persists in our laws and our anecdotal understanding of human behavior. Ex. someone experiencing extreme emotion not being responsible for their actions according to a criminal court, self-help processes for wrangling "lizard brain" so rational brain wins, etc. More example uses (some in the text some from external sources):

• Therapy

  • Psychoeducation: Explaining why the thinking mind shuts down during panic
  • Regulation: Calming physical survival reflexes before trying talk therapy
  • Self-Compassion: Destigmatizing involuntary fear responses like freezing

• Law

  • Culpability: Explaining impulsive "heat of passion" crimes
  • Testimony: Normalizing fragmented memories in trauma survivors
  • Sentencing: Advocating for juveniles based on incomplete brain development

• Business

  • Neuromarketing: Targeting survival instincts to trigger impulse buys
  • Leadership: Managing workplace panic during corporate crises
  • Negotiation: Keeping clients calm so they can think logically

• Ethics

  • Tribalism: Showing how fear-mongering turns off empathy
  • Biases: Tracking how gut reactions overpower rational ethics

Example given re: crime / emotion then elaborated on: "But feeling distressed is not evidence of being irrational or that your so-called emotional brain has hijacked your supposed rational brain. Distress can be evidence that your whole brain is expending recources toward an anticipated payoff." It feels like there is a hole, is your whole brain expending its resources toward an anticipated payoff, in her view, rational / is that how she's intending us to read that part? Knee-jerk that I experience is "whole brain expending its resources toward an anticpated payoff" does sound like there are no resources for "rational thinking" but I think she's trying to show us that "rational thinking" isn't its own separate process. Come back to this after finishing the book.

Lesson 2: Your Brain Is A Network**

This is literal. We are flush with metaphors but this is not a metaphor. This chapter brought me back to the popularity of saying "you only use 10 of your brain" -- complexity depends on this. Meatloaf Brain refers to an imaginary model where all neurons talk to all other neurons, I imagined this as "using 100% of the brain". It's not complex. Pocketknife Brain is an imaginary model that's more in line with phrenology, where a part of the brain is mapped 1:1 to a function in the body, also not very complex. I think of the cortical humunculous. A truer representation might be imagining many overlapping lightning strikes in different configurations. The space between neurons is a synapse. Neurotransmitters and neuromodulators are the chemicals that facilitate or impede (not A or B, more like a conductor, electrical, on one end and bad weather on the other). Dopamine, serotonin, etc. If you reach for something in front of you, then do it again, identically, the way the network of 128 billion neurons configures to make it happen can change / do it differently. This is called "degeneracy". "...multiple degenerate neuronal systems can sustain the same function either via similar mechanisms or by implementing different cognitive strategies".

Degenerate -- how did we get to this word as an insult? Hah.

What's actually happening between neurons when they "fire"

• What travels down the first neuron: Ions moving in a wave.
• What crosses the gap: Neurotransmitter molecules.
• What gets triggered in the second neuron: A new wave of ions.

Synaptic Neuro-Transmitter-Gated Receptors. Also called Ionotropic Receptors.

The gate's closed, a neurotransmitter (a chemical) slides into the receptor, the gate opens.

Lesson 3: Little Brains Wire Themselves to Their World

What's learned here: why tiny humans being born as little lumps that cannot control their limbs is advantageous when it comes to perpetuating culture and learning how to direct attention to their niche. Follow the gaze of the caretaker: what's important? Of all the input I'm receiving as a baby blob, I rely on my caretaker to direct my attention to what's important for my body budget. The caretaker also helps me manage this until my agency is online and I can provide for myself.

Lesson 4: You Brain Predicts (Almost) Everything You Do

Your brain is predicting what's coming next. Example given: Pavlov's Dog. The dog isn't salivating because of the metronome, it's salivating because the metronome helped its brain predict that it was about to be time to eat, and its body prepares. That feels a little "duh" but what's fascinating is what she describes later -- if you brain successfully predicts what's going to happen, it has no use for incoming sensory data. Is it the case that without novelty, we stay inside of a hallucination? Novel things are also a hallucination but they're not a pre-conceived one based on experience. What happens when the prediction model is upset? Is this the actual job of the Salience Network, to adjust the hallucination based on a mismatch of incoming sensory data / the prediciton model? "Look", because it doesn't fit the model? What does this mean about thoughts that "suddenly become important"?

Prediction Mismatch Workflow Options

Learn

1. Incorporate sense data from the ouside world
2. Update predictions
3. Construct a new experience that matches sensory data

Fuck up, then learn if you're lucky?

1. Maintain hallucination against prediction

^^^ would the second option be because the constructed reality is high-risk? Or essential to survival? AKA seeing a large dropoff on a trail where there is none, or seeing someone with a gun when they really have a stick (this is the example from the book).

Our brain is wired to initiate actions before we're aware of them. Our actions are under the control of our memory and environment. Of course, here comes the Free Will discourse.

Free Will has a lot of paper dedicated to it but I cannot understand what it really means. More on this later.

Lesson 5: Your Brain Secretly Works with Other Brains

Your brain burns 20% of your body's metabolic budget -- I want to understand this. Around 350-450 calories a day. Most of this is just keeping things running, cognitively difficult tasks can cause a 10%-15% increase in total energy spent (according to one source this isn't a significant alteration). Feeling exhausted after a difficult work day / hard learning day is more likely caused by stress. Is that accurate? Earlier in her book she said that cortisol spiking can increase the availability of glucose needed for the brain to learn. Is this why work is stressful in the specific way it feels stressful to me, because I'm learning?

The properties of affect or mood

Activated or deactivated Pleasant or unpleasant

Lesson 6:

Having a small epiphany / tip of the tongue moment -- she's talking about how our brains create social reality and we live by it. Imagining humans operating such that we don't cross borders, we drive on roads, organized hubs for air travel and power etc. And then also thinking about her example with Meatloaf brain -- how a brain in which every neuron can fire with every other neuron is less complex than a brain where every neuron can only fire with some other neurons.

Are the characteristics and limitations of our social reality analogous to the limitations of our neurons' ability to co-fire? This might come together for me after sleep. There are threads to pull re: global information and social media but I wonder how Meatloaf-life that really is. I could just be imagining that it's Meatloaf-ish because it's my experience / must be everyone's.

Notes on a search for a conceptual bypass in the brain; neuro-philosophical investigation into how the brain emanates the self, and how to intentionally disrupt its construction in order to escape loops of rumination and existential isolation and grief. (this summary is a mess and full of misconceptions)

Hyperfixation is probably part of the Default Network Mode. The Salience Network monitors sensory data and internal events and can engage the Task-Positive Network (TPN) if something salient requires task-oriented thinking or physical effort. They cannot be engaged simultaneously. The DMN and TPN compete, couple, or cooperate depending on task / state. Ex. highly-focused, physically demanding, high-risk activities (I imagine) would largely fall to the TPN and the DMN would take a back seat. The brain uses a Tripartite Network Model governed by three hubs: the DMN, the Salience Network, and the CEN / TPN (one hub). What I'm describing is high-level cognition in terms of three interacting networks. DMN is associated with the internal narrative, the past and the future, and self-relfection. The Central Executive Network handles outward attention, working memory, and goal execution. The Salience Network monitors the environment and directs energy between the DMN and CEN. The Salience Network monitors for relevant stuff, stuff that's salient AKA matters enough to notice. It's monitoring sensory input but it's also picking up internally generated signals like thoughts that have become important. This is key. Metacognitive dysfunction can involve assigning too much importance or power to some thoughts. Will return to this later. Salience allocates attention to something has upset a prediction model, doesn't fit in the environment, ex. I smell something burning, I notice a snake, someone's reaction doesn't match expectations (thinking in terms of microexpressions, maybe).

Deep meditation is given as an example of these processes being dynamically engaged. The DMN is active but the user is not absorbed by it.

The brain can be prompted to reconfigure the cooperation between internal (DMN) and external (TPN) processing mechanisms with (assuming we're stuck in a self-referential internal-processing loop):

1. Thermal shock
2. Proprioceptive and Kinetic Demand AKA complex movement that requires balance or intense physical force. Increasing sensorimotor and attentional demands may reduce the cognitive resources available for unconstrained recursive self-modeling.
3. A blunt-force tool like alcohol. We’ve removed this from the equation.
4. Engaging in a highly tactile and physical task with clear rules and physical resistance. Examples given are chopping wood and kneading dough. In my world this probably maps to sewing. Making a note that things tend to come back to "chop wood and carry water".

Apparently flow state and creative work inspire a hybric/dynamic configuration. Generation (DMN) vs. editing (CEN). This hybrid is also described when it comes to learning complex musical pieces, just in reverse. The CEN is active first while you’re learning and memorizing, then the DMN after motor integration allows you to emote through the piece. Note that the final “emoting” stage is not strictly the DMN, it’s flow state, which is the coupling of the DMN and the CEN. I've got more questions about this.

Experiencing awe is a dynamic configuration, like a flow state, like deep meditation. Outward attention (CEN) is active, but your sensory load is so massive that the Narrator (mPFC) gets desynchronized while the Archivist (PCC) remains open. What seems unique about this (compared to creative generation and flow-state activity) is the work required. I can activate a dynamic configuration by simply going somewhere and observing. Is meditation also simply going somewhere (to sit on the floor) and observing? Another box.

Musical improvisation. Not in the box of effortless desynchronization.

How does the allocation work? Are we osscilating? Is categorizing complex tasks actually too broad / does this truly get broken down into learning and expression? In that case, what things are truly hybrid employments of these parts of the brain outside of meditation and awe?

Opening the ego black box

The ego is a dynamic, continuous process. It is a self-referential simulation generated by a network of specialized hubs firing in perfect synchrony. A self-referential simulation. A self-referential simulation. A self-referential simulation. A self-referential simulation. A self-referential simulation. A self-referential simulation. A self-referential simulation. A self-referential simulation. A self-referential simulation.

recursive self-reference

The Posterior Cingulate Cortext and Precuneus and the Medial Prefontal Cortext are two core nodes of the DMN. They're not the whole thing.

The PCC is located toward the back-middle of the brain. It’s a major part of a function in the brain that's the librarian of my autobiographical memory. It tracks history and connects past experiences to my current self-image. What are reasons why this part of the brain might operate poorly? Another box. Note that memories are not stored in the PCC / they aren't sitting in the back of my brain. The PCC goes looking for applicable bigraphical information / context to apply to the current situation. I might use "This Researcher goes to the Library" as a shorthand for the process.

The mPFC is located right behind the forehead. Mine is very active. It plays a major role in self-referential processing and emotional evaluation (it asks “what does this mean about me?”). It projects my identity into the future. It gathers data for the continuous internal monolog (situation models) that dictate my personal story. Shorthand for this process might be "This Researcher studies Lacey".

Where is language?

Can generation of the ego be viewed as a closed-loop conditional circuit performed between the PCC and the mPFC? Does the ego emanate from the phase-locking (synchrony) of the circuit? At what point and through what recurrent processes does information about me become the experience of being me?

Clarifications

Bypassing wouldn't be an actual neural bypass but methods for alternative routes for organizing attention and prediction that don't require language-mediated recursive self-narration to dominate conscious experience

Network Desynchronization

Recursive self-reference

Some speculation / what if:

"Does X reduce recursive self-reference by overwhelming or decoupling evaluative self-processing while preserving autobiographical and perceptual integration?"

Do I want to disrupt the self-model or do I want to stop the self-model from being recursively mistaken for the entirety of experience?

“If language is a low-bandwidth, highly error-prone prediction model, music is the high-bandwidth hardware bypass.” (poetic)

Is it: either disingage the DMN, or destabilize its circuit? If the DMN is oscillating, what's the TPN doing? Right now in my mind's eye, the destabilization of the DMN is conceptually tied to the idea of the TPN somehow engaging itself from within with some kind of feedback? Is the opposite of fire water, or is it no fire

Language

What does language add to motivational architecture?

Bird doesn't need an internal monologue to make a decision that it's time to migrate (that we know of)

Bird

Something in the organism or its environment has changed

• It becomes motivationally significant
• Bird ready to migrate
• Bird goes

Human

Something in the organism/world has changed.

• I notice something (SN says "look at that")
• What is this? (how do we use sensory input and memory to identify things?)
• Why do I feel this? (not sure what's happening here)
• What does this mean? (PCC process / archivist gathering data -- is that right?)
• What does it mean about me? (DMN researching Lacey)
• Why am I the kind of person who feels this? (what's this part?)
• What if I always feel this? (this seems metacognitive plus temporal extension of self)
• ...

The Book by Alan Watts, chapter 1: "Inside Information"

The sensation of "I" as a lonely and isolated center of being is so powerful and commonsensical, and so fundamental to our modes of speech and thought, to our laws and social institutions, that we cannot experience selfhood except as something superficial in the scheme of the universe. I seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time--a rare, complicated, and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe of biological evolution, where the wave of life bursts into individual, sparkling, and multicolored drops that gleam for a moment only to vanish forever. Under such conditioning it seems impossible and even absurd to realize that myself does not reside in the drop alone, but in the whole surge of energy which ranges from the galaxies to the nuclear fields in my body. At this level of existence "I" am immeasurably old; my forms are inifite and their comings and goings are simply the pulses or vibrations of a single and eternal flow of energy.

Paradise Garden: A trip through Howard Finster's visionary world by Robert Peacock with Annibel Jenkins -- "The Casket", quote Howard Finster:

I had a vision to be cremated and my ashes put in my casket. People who are cremated see all the animals that were offered to God for man's sins over thousands of years. You know they had to remate them animals before they were acceptable, because cremation does away with corruption.

Cremation is the only way to escape corruption. Corruption is where you rot and stink. So I want to be cremated, and then Christ won't see no corruption. I would be cleaner. I could be cremated in three hours. It would be a sacrifice to God. Then he could accept me. Embalming anybody is prolonging corruption. When you embalm anybody, you are saying against the Bible, "I don't want to go to dust."

You are suppose to go to dust.

• Self
• The Default Mode Network
• Metacognition
• Awareness
• Thought
• Self-awareness
• Qualia
• Intrapersonal communication
• Introspection
• Desire

1. The hardcover book Grapefruit by Yoko Ono that shouldn't exist as it's got instructions to burn after reading could absolutely be confused for a grapefruit like I confuse a row of keys on a piano from C to G (white and black keys included) for my mother.