The challenger and the Matrix.

Dr. Walter J. Freeman is a professor of Neurobiology at the University of California at Berkeley. He received an M.D. from Yale University. He completed postdoctoral training in neurophysiology at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1959, the year he joined the Berkeley faculty. He is an acknowledged pioneer of brain research whose books include Societies of Brains: A Study in the Neuroscience of Love and Hate.

In fact, Dr. Freeman believes he has physiological evidence for his bold assertions.

Dr. Freeman is a pioneering neurobiologist who has been doing brain research at the University of California at Berkeley since 1959. He is a medical doctor, student of physics, mathematics and philosophy, and an author.

An acknowledged pioneer in brain research, Dr. Freeman’s experimentally-based ideas about consciousness and the central role of cooperation in the brain, family, tribe, and society are revitalizing honored scientific and philosophical traditions.

His work challenges many in today’s scientific establishment, including Nobel Laureates. But Freeman is secure in the company he keeps — many of his ideas have been around for centuries. He is droll in casting himself in the role of midwife, someone to update and recognize the critical role of cooperative action.

Experimental work leads Dr. Freeman to believe that we evolved within a matrix of cooperative action within brains and between them. Cooperation is a profound reality for humans. It is fundamental between neurons, in families, within tribes, and among nations. In fact, Dr. Freeman believes, consciousness itself is rooted in these cooperative interactions. He believes we create ourselves by our actions and that he has the experimental data to demonstrate it. In terms of Darwin’s natural selection, Dr. Freeman is confident we were selected to be cooperative.

Freeman also has evidence that learning is action-based. We learn from experience. But before we can learn new behaviors, we must first un-learn old ones. Both un-learning old ways and learning new ones were required for our hominid ancestors survival, he believes. Freeman thinks the physiology of un-learning requires deeply emotional experiences, with neurochemical mechanisms at work during those emotional experiences. Where do learning, un-learning and cooperation come together? In rhythmic, predictable actions like drumming, dancing and singing. And according to Dr. Freeman, only humans have rhythm.

There are profound implications for our species in Dr. Freeman’s new way of seeing consciousness. His work gives him confidence that human beings have only just begun to comprehend our full potential. He does not see any limitations on our growth or the richness of human experience.

So what have we to fear as we face an uncertain future? Fear itself. Sound familiar?

Walter J. Freeman (b. 30 January 1927 in Washington DC) studied physics and mathematics at M.I.T., electronics in the Navy in World War II, philosophy at the University of Chicago, medicine at Yale University, internal medicine at Johns Hopkins, and neuropsychiatry at UCLA. He has taught brain science in the University of California at Berkeley since 1959, where he is Professor of the Graduate School.

Dr. Freeman received his M.D. cum laude in 1954, and he has more than 20 awards, among which are the Bennett Award from the Society of Biological Psychiatry in 1964, a Guggenheim in 1965, the MERIT Award from NIMH in 1990, and the Pioneer Award from the Neural Networks Council of the IEEE in 1992. He was President of the International Neural Network Society in 1994, is Life Fellow of the IEEE, and Chair, IEEE Oakland-East Bay Section, EMBS, 2006.

He has authored over 450 articles and many books including Mass Action in the Nervous System, Societies of Brains, Neurodynamics, and in 2001 – How Brains Make Up Their Minds.

Author: Paula Gordon Read & Listen to More

Reposted by: Natalie Geld, WhyCon.org

Dr. Gerald Edelman, Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, Founder and Director of the Neurosciences Institute and Chair of Neurobiology at the Scripps Research Institute discusses: the brain, consciousness, Neural Darwinism, the theory of neuronal group selection (TNGS), and re-entrant feedback connections.

Dr. Gerald Edelman, Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, Founder and Director of the Neurosciences Institute and Chair of Neurobiology at the Scripps Research Institute discusses these ideas and more in this lecture. Tune in!

“Suppose  we did understand everything about how your brain works … So, do you  think it would not work by beliefs, desires, and intentions?

Do  you believe that your illusion of time, namely of your movement from  the past, to the present, to the future, is actually a correct  descriptor, when in fact the past and future are concepts, and only the  remembered present is the one you are experiencing right now?”

Darwin’s theory of natural selection is what guided his groundbreaking research on antibody structures, and it is what underlies his theory of neuronal group selection in his work on consciousness. “I wanted to bring Darwin’s selectional process to neurons,” he says.

Gerald Edelman’s many books on consciousness explore the various ways that neuronal circuits get established. In the developmental stage of the brain, some neuronal assemblies, or maps, are formed according to genetic rules. Experience then reinforces or weakens these assemblies—or gives rise to new ones—according to how efficiently they respond to signals from the world or the body. The last process, re-entry, is the most difficult to explain, Edelman says, but it is also the most important, since it integrates the activities of various assemblies through what he calls “ongoing parallel signaling between separate brain maps along massively parallel anatomical connections.” The binding together of the neuronal activities of maps associated with, say, the perception of an object and those associated with, say, memory, yields an integrated yet highly differentiated experience: a “scene” of primary consciousness that researchers call a quale.

But does the biochemistry underlying these qualia (the plural of quale) adequately account for the experience itself, not to mention aspects of higher-order consciousness that we associate with a sense of self and language? Edelman appears to be of two minds. “We evolved structures that invented language,” he says. Yet once humans acquired syntax, Edelman adds, “all bets are off.” Biology, he seems to suggest, can take us only so far in understanding the symbol-using mind. “It’s not totally reductive,” he says. At the same time, among the work being done by the some 36 researchers in Edelman’s institute is an ongoing effort to build brain-based devices that perform a task—picking up or avoiding different kinds of objects—not according to an elaborately prescriptive program but by learning from experience, altering, creating, strengthening, and sometimes replacing the synthetic “neural” pathways within its program through success or failure at picking up the right kind of blocks. “Brain-based devices will happen if consciousness is a physical, natural process,” Edelman says, clearly implying that it is at least a possibility.

(Excerpted from Jay Tolson’s article: Is There Room for the Soul? New challenges to our most cherished beliefs about the human spirit. Originally published by U.S. News & World Report, October 23, 2006)

A fountain of long cell fibers explodes along the midline of the human brain.

Computational neuroscientists study nervous systems in terms of their information processing capabilities.  Standing at the junction of computer science and neuroscience, they have both the tools and the impetus to understand the details of the connectomes of whichever organisms they study.

An approach that has been taken in humans involves using the technique of diffusion tensor imaging, and MRI technique that can determine the direction that axons run in in an intact brain.  For example, the above image (by Thomas Schultz) shows a DTI-derived image of the connections that run through the midline of a living human brain.

Such images are of great potential use in studying brain lesions, doing studies on brain function, clinical diagnosis, and whole-brain level analysis of neural circuits.  However, they lack the resolution needed to map individual synapses, thus falling short (for the time being) of being able to comprehensively map the connections between neurons in a brain.  For this, we have to go to microscopy techniques that involve looking directly at neural tissue.  These can only been done in animals, because it is presently illegal to harvest brain tissue from humans for experimental purposes (again, a no-brainer.)

(Image by Thomas Schultz shows a DTI-derived image of the connections that run through the midline of a living human brain.)

http://cephalove.southernfriedscience.com/

The mind leads – the body follows. Simple, right? Not really. From our first flickering of consciousness, we are taught what to think, not how to think. Unfortunately, most of us know more about our iPhone Apps than about what makes us, and our world tick. Let alone the integral nature of energy.

In the 2008 Towards a Science of Consciousness conference, *Brack and Hill noted that most undergraduate and graduate students in the healing sciences “… admit to distrusting science as any form of guide for working with “real human problems.” And they proposed: “helping to map human problems onto the domain of Quantum Mechanics, Chaos/Complexity theory, and Consciousness offers exciting new perspectives on the human experience.”

Great idea – I propose we grease their wheels before they reach grad school.

Many people, in general, are science phobic, thinking science is something for what’s ‘out there.’ Generally our chemistry, biology and physics courses in primary education (perhaps even secondary and beyond, you tell me) tinker with external forces to reveal process and potentiality; using equations, beakers, elements, a blowtorch, philosophical discussions, or a frog, cat, pig and scalpel. All important explorations and inquiry to be sure.

Patricia Smith Churchland explores the impact of scientific developments on our understanding of consciousness, the self, free will, decision making, ethics, learning, and religion and issues concerning the neurobiological basis of consciousness, the self, and free will, as well as on more technical questions concerning to what degree the nervous system is hierarchically organized, how the difficult issue of co-ordination and timing is managed by nervous systems, and what are the mechanisms for the perceptual phenomenon of filling-in. A professor at the University of California, San Diego and Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute, Patricia believes that “…to understand the mind one must understand the brain.” Our bodies, our minds and brains are mysterious and fascinating and the perfect ‘tools’ for stimulating curricular relevance, and to show the resonance of science to life.

A science of consciousness and volition… we humans are walking chemistry Labs – Petri dishes for our own human experiments – quantum possibilities awaiting our observation. Great minds are not anomalies. They use their minds differently – consciousness is key. This is our time to begin introducing students to the vital, exciting and challenging domains of consciousness, of our potentiality.

Supple, fertile minds of youth are eager for the discovery of how to tap and use their potential, and wither when their studies and experiences don’t make sense for them. Let’s show them how powerful they are — how they’re influenced by/and influence their overall environments.

To Be The Pinball… or The Pinball Wizard?
That is The Question.There is exciting opportunity for providing a supplement to current science curriculum to include an experiential examination of their personal biological science laboratory – that of their brain, body-wide systems and their consciousness – and this direct connection to all experience, both internal & external.

Let’s bridge the gap! Quality instruction on the science of being human, simplifying our complex mind/body maps and experimenting with their own individual chem labs, will generate improvements for students across the board – including critical thinking, creativity, self-reliance, innovation and motivation, as well as building a foundation for free thinking – healthier – minds.

How Do We Accomplish This? Develop stimulating supplemental curriculum which springboards from current Science, Humanities and Math Curriculum — which we can provide to private and public Science Departments. Imagine the ripple effect!