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Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

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Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#61

Post by krashnburn200 »

visarga wrote: post #23
nfc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or We won't have true AI until AI explains the human brain as a "form of AI"

We won't have true AI until AI stands on its own. Just as a bootstrapped compiler can compile itself, an AI should be capable to reinvent itself without outside help. Until then, it's just a child-AI, dependent on human brains to be designed and optimized.

AI has alway struck me as an absurd nomenclature.

Inteligence is inteligence regardless of origin.

Might as well call us AI Accidental Inteligence.

I kinda like Engineered Inteligence.

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#62

Post by titzer »

tomrod wrote: post #55
titzer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that this time around we have massively augmented our data processing capabilities and improved our ability to investigate brain function at multiple scales. We can now formulate falsifiable theories and test them. Science was still pretty immature in the 19th century in that it wasn't always possible to crisply state theories in ways that give rise to testable predictions. Is the brain solely a com…

> We can now formulate falsifiable theories and test them. Science was still pretty immature in the 19th century in that it wasn't always possible to crisply state theories in ways that give rise to testable predictions. Doesn't that still hold true today with string theory and social sciences?

AFAIK string theory hasn't made any testable predictions beyond the standard model, but the standard model itself does have testable predictions that have so far all held up. So string theory is just as falsifiable as the standard model.

I don't know about the social sciences. That's painting with a pretty broad brush, IMHO.

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#64

Post by desireco42 »

coldtea wrote: post #24
desireco42 wrote: post #18

If our brains would work fully all the time, our head would boil and explode. I don't see how this is so new. I am glad that functioning of the brain is understood much better. Also, this could be utilized if we could find ways to increase focus, maybe even artificially, well artificially until brain gets trained for full flow state for example.

> If our brains would work fully all the time, our head would boil and explode. I don't see how this is so new. Citation needed.

I was referring the energy usage of the brain. It is never all used at the same time, just a small portion, but that doesn't mean other parts are not used, just they are all turned on and off.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard-cal...

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#65

Post by yellowstuff »

tomrod wrote: post #55
titzer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that this time around we have massively augmented our data processing capabilities and improved our ability to investigate brain function at multiple scales. We can now formulate falsifiable theories and test them. Science was still pretty immature in the 19th century in that it wasn't always possible to crisply state theories in ways that give rise to testable predictions. Is the brain solely a com…

> We can now formulate falsifiable theories and test them. Science was still pretty immature in the 19th century in that it wasn't always possible to crisply state theories in ways that give rise to testable predictions. Doesn't that still hold true today with string theory and social sciences?

Social sciences do generate testable predictions, but they often run poor studies that fail to falsify untrue predictions. 538 recently had a good explanation.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#66

Post by noonespecial »

nxc18 wrote: post #20

Taking some time to reflect on and consider my own thinking behavior has been interesting. Just like exploring any other system, subjecting myself to sleep stress (in order to meet aggressive deadlines) has allowed me to see what happens when certain things fail, revealing functional boundaries. I see it as kind of analogous to when you starve a circuit/device of power - it behaves in unexpected ways, revealing imple…

I have migraines and every once in a blue moon I get a very interesting symptom along with it. Fully awake and cognizant I simply lose the ability to read. Even Dick and Jane become nearly insurmountable. It happens even before the pain and aura arrive, I'm fully functional, just suddenly illiterate. Its the damndest thing. It's only for a few minutes but I know what it's like to be a fully grown adult with a relatively high IQ who can't read.

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#67

Post by NPMaxwell »

narutouzumaki wrote: post #52
posterboy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the "sound" of your braincells dying. At least that's what I heard relating to tinitus.

What? Can you elaborate?

Tinnitus may be like phantom limb: when receiving no input from a group of sensors, the system fills in for the missing information. It's like a microphone with compression: when the speaker stops talking, white noise becomes louder. Your neural system does a lot of filling in for missing sensations, most obviously in tests of what happens when bits of spoken words are removed from a recording: people perceive that the bits were in the recording by triangulating from other information that the bits had been said. Similarly, when hearing loss prevents certain frequencies to be signaled by your sound sensors, the system fills in for the lack of signal in that range. There is still research and some doubt about this theory of what is going on: https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/tinnitus

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#68

Post by mdrzn »

noonespecial wrote: post #66
nxc18 wrote: post #20

Taking some time to reflect on and consider my own thinking behavior has been interesting. Just like exploring any other system, subjecting myself to sleep stress (in order to meet aggressive deadlines) has allowed me to see what happens when certain things fail, revealing functional boundaries. I see it as kind of analogous to when you starve a circuit/device of power - it behaves in unexpected ways, revealing imple…

I have migraines and every once in a blue moon I get a very interesting symptom along with it. Fully awake and cognizant I simply lose the ability to read. Even Dick and Jane become nearly insurmountable. It happens even before the pain and aura arrive, I'm fully functional, just suddenly illiterate. Its the damndest thing. It's only for a few minutes but I know what it's like to be a fully grown adult with a relativ…

This is interesting. Does it happen before every migraine, or just sometimes? Have you got yourself checked out? Hope everything is fine but that shit would scare me like hell at least the first couple times.

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#69

Post by malux85 »

noonespecial wrote: post #66
nxc18 wrote: post #20

Taking some time to reflect on and consider my own thinking behavior has been interesting. Just like exploring any other system, subjecting myself to sleep stress (in order to meet aggressive deadlines) has allowed me to see what happens when certain things fail, revealing functional boundaries. I see it as kind of analogous to when you starve a circuit/device of power - it behaves in unexpected ways, revealing imple…

I have migraines and every once in a blue moon I get a very interesting symptom along with it. Fully awake and cognizant I simply lose the ability to read. Even Dick and Jane become nearly insurmountable. It happens even before the pain and aura arrive, I'm fully functional, just suddenly illiterate. Its the damndest thing. It's only for a few minutes but I know what it's like to be a fully grown adult with a relativ…

That's interesting! I have a similar but not nearly as severe symptom caused by lack of sleep - the first thing to go for me is spelling.

Weirdly I can still code easily, even keeping in my head high level module interactions and abstractions, to low level implementation details, but I'll occasionally stop, stare at a word, convinced that it's spelt wrong, google it and see its correct, and go back and stare at it - because it just feels wrong.

When I've reached this point, I know it's time to break!

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#70

Post by pavel_lishin »

coldtea wrote: post #22
nxc18 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this obsession with the "purpose" of dreaming. As far as I have experienced its just noise on the wire that we sometimes are conscious enough to recognize. Having spent enough time in extremely sleep-deprived states for projects recently, I've experienced firsthand a lot of funky stuff going on (e.g. falling asleep and waking up with a full page of class notes in front of me, or realizing that I've…

> As far as I have experienced its just noise on the wire that we sometimes are conscious enough to recognize. If it was actual noise it would have absolute minimal statistical chance of having any coherent structure.

Rorschach tests seem to have coherent structure, despite being randomly generated blobs.
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