Pilot of My Soul

nickynicky9doors writes "The International Herald Tribune has an article on one of the recent advances in neuroscience. The article harkens back to Freud and suggests many of our actions are unconscious. Brain circuits involved in reward assesment process dopamine as a chemical signal. It is thought human dopamine-based reward assesment includes sending dopamine signals to the frontal cortex. Beginning in our earliest years the system informs our expectations and our reactions."

Comments

Novelty

[sydbarrett74]

This corroborates with the work of Claude Shannon, who said that the value of a message is proportional to its novelty, i.e., its unexpectedness. For example, if someone were to tell me that the sky is blue, that's not information. If someone were to tell me that the sky is red, then I would have to assess the accuracy of *all* my visual perceptions.