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A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

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Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#31

Post by Camillo »

If he had simply lost the ability to recognize the glyphs for 2-9, he would have still seen their shapes, and he could have learned them again, just as he learned new glyphs for them.

What seems to be happening here is a sort of crosstalk or feedback. His brain is still recognizing the glyphs, but those neurons are sending unwanted signals elsewhere in his visual cortex which scramble the perceived image.

My interpretation of this case is that the image we perceive consciously is a combination of the raw visual data and various recognition modules, so that we don't just perceive "a curved line crossing back on itself in the lower right of the image" plus "the abstract notion of the number 8", but we see the number 8 localized where the line forming it is. Same with any other symbols, objects, faces etc.

Because of this, the neurons that represent the conscious perception of a certain section of the visual field must receive both "low-level" information (the curves forming the digit, their color, the color of the background), but also "mid-level" recognition output ("the digit 8"). So if the neuron(s) recognizing the 8 act up and send scrambled signals, they can scramble the whole conscious perception of the corresponding area of the visual field. The fact that it also disrupts his conscious perception of faces overlying the digit confirms this.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#32

Post by au8er »

namenotrequired wrote: post #14
asab wrote: post #6

I have also seen this example, where a man blinded by strokes still avoids obstacles and recognizes emotions, without any conscious awareness[1]. Is this the same phenomenon? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/health/23blin.html

It is the phenomenon called blindsight, mentioned in this article. (Edit: but not explained, so your question is reasonable)

From what I recall in my neuroscience class, this is likely to be caused by damage to the visual cortex, which is used to consciously process visual information, but not the superior colliculi, which is used to unconsciously process peripheral vision. This is caused by damage to one of the visual processing regions but not others.

From the article, it appears something similar has happened. Corticobasal syndrome potentially killed off some brain cells but not others, leading to damage at some areas but not others.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#33

Post by copperx »

djhaskin987 wrote: post #27

> That he could still interpret letters, Schubert says, lends support to the idea that the brain has a specialized module for processing numbers. This makes a lot of sense to me. I have almost no trouble at all remembering long strings of numbers, but I have the opposite problem with names. I cannot remember names to save my life unless I use them on a daily basis. I feel like this is a flip-flop from how most people…

I'm "suffer" from this condition, too. I haven't found much literature about it as I thought I would.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#34

Post by Camillo »

andai wrote: post #19
maxkwallace wrote: post #12

https://www.livescience.com/nueroscience-patient-who-can-not... ^ This article (reporting on the same research) seems to be a bit better.

Maybe so, but the ads were so annoying I couldn't keep reading. It was almost comical how they kept popping up every few seconds, like some kind of parody. Fortunately, https://outline.com/5nJgjL Curiously this article presents a different hypothesis about why he is able to read 0 and 1: > It's also "surprising" that his brain doesn't have problems with "0" and "1," McCloskey added. It's not clear why, but those two…

> Or those two numbers might be processed differently than other numbers in the brain, as "zero wasn't invented for quite a long time after the other digits were," he said.

Come on, that's just silly. What are they even suggesting here? Zero is encoded in a different area of RMS's brain because he learned it as an adult, after its invention under the Nixon administration?

Also from that page: "The group of researchers created new digits for RFS which they called "surrogate digits" so that he could use them in daily life."

That's just not some sort of new jargon, it's what the word surrogate means! How does someone end up writing for a living without learning how to use a dictionary?

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#35

Post by mojuba »

komali2 wrote: post #23
andai wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I read about split-brain experiments and wonder, if my brain were to split, which side I'd end up on?

What even is I though?

"I" is something that knows its place in space and time, the here-and-now, but also has a memory of here-and-now moments of the past. As such "I" is an illusion. If a quantum clone of you is created both I's will have the same memory of the past here-and-now moments, so both will be you at the same. So probbaly something similar happens if a brain is split.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#36

Post by apoorvkumar »

mojuba wrote: post #35
komali2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What even is I though?

"I" is something that knows its place in space and time, the here-and-now, but also has a memory of here-and-now moments of the past. As such "I" is an illusion. If a quantum clone of you is created both I's will have the same memory of the past here-and-now moments, so both will be you at the same. So probbaly something similar happens if a brain is split.

About your analogy - quantum cloning may not be allowed by laws of nature. That would make any consciousness unique at any point in time.

Also I feel the experiment suggests split brains would most likely become 2 very different (new?) entities with different behavior after losing integrity.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#37

Post by behringer »

mojuba wrote: post #35
komali2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What even is I though?

"I" is something that knows its place in space and time, the here-and-now, but also has a memory of here-and-now moments of the past. As such "I" is an illusion. If a quantum clone of you is created both I's will have the same memory of the past here-and-now moments, so both will be you at the same. So probbaly something similar happens if a brain is split.

"I" isn't a memory or a here and now. It's the universe experiencing itself. It's an observer. What would happen to that experience if it was split? Would it make a new independant observer?

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#38

Post by perl4ever »

leonidasv wrote: post #10

This has some implications for artificial general intelligence. If consciousness does not automatically emerge from some sufficient high cognitive processing skills, those sci-fi super-human AI may never arrive. Anyway, I feel sorry for this patient. This must be a tough disease to die with.

It's increasingly looking like there are deep biological reasons for expressions like "gut instinct". There are a lot of neurons in the digestive system. A recent paper[2] appeared to show that the fundamental purpose of sleep is to regulate reactive molecules in the digestive system. Another item I saw in quanta, [or somewhere else][0], described how gut bacteria have a direct link to the vertebrate brain and immune system.

So my modest proposal is that if we want AGI, we need to figure out how to implement a digestive system in silico.

[0] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/your-gut-directly-co...

[1]https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-microbiomes-affect-fear-2...

[2]https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-sleep-deprivation-kills-2...

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#40

Post by neom »

As someone with really bad dyslexia and dyscalculia I can't say I'm particularly surprised. I've done a lot of research on what neurologic differences are present and they're fairly interesting:

http://www.neuroanatomy.wisc.edu/selflearn/Dyslexia.htm

https://www.brainfacts.org/archives/2011/dyslexia-and-the-br...

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