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The Thalamus - The Kernel in Your Mind

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the my-brain-starts-with-the-thx-noise dept.

corbettw writes "This article on Yahoo Science News describes a new finding that explains how the thalamus is used by your brain to essentially boot your brain, and provide for central processing and control of all impulses going to and from the cortex. The article describes its function as an operating system, but from the description it actually seems closer to the functions of a kernel." From the article: "The finding, published last week in the journal Neuroscience, changes the way scientists understand nitric oxide's role in the brain, and it also has them rethinking the function of the thalamus, where it is released. The thalamus was thought to be a fairly primitive structure, sort of a gate that could either open and allow sensory information to stream into the cortex, the higher functioning part of the brain, or cut off the flow entirely. Godwin says the new research shows it's more accurate to think of the thalamus not as a gate but as a club bouncer, who doesn't simply allow a huge rush of people to go in or no one at all, but picks and chooses whom to let in and out. "

6 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Disturbing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Godwin says the new research shows it's more accurate to think of the thalamus not as a gate but as a club bouncer, who doesn't simply allow a huge rush of people to go in or no one at all, but picks and chooses whom to let in and out. "

    Sounds like the Thalamus is more like IPtables, rather than a kernel.

  2. embracing the overblown analogy for a moment... by pb · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Are you sure that it doesn't sound more like a bootloader, or a DHCP server, or a firewall/router, at the edge of the network, protecting the main Beowulf cluster, etc., etc....

    Ok, enough of that.

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    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
  3. Metaphor City by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The thalamus is a gate, a bouncer, a kernel, a bootloader, a chamber, a relay, a telephone exchange.

    I personally think that the thalamus is like a coathook. You can hang whatever metaphor you feel like on it.

    --
    Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
  4. Norton Ghost by krell · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This also brings us closer to the day when we can re-program our brains to a desired previous state. This is something you might want to do after (for example) learning Esperanto or how to speak very fluent Klingon, when you start to think that Jon Katz news items make perfect sense, having gone to see "Gigli" or "Star Trek 10", having seen the Goatse image one too many times (once is too much!) or getting infected with an embarassing Olivia Newton-John earworm: things you'd really not have in your wetware. Perhaps Symantec should roll out a new version of Norton Ghost. One that uses real ghosts, this time.

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    Where were you when the voynix came?
  5. Re:What some people need... by zephc · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think its all the garbage that gets installed after it boots for the very first time.

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    "I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
  6. Re:Let's not forget the order by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I guess we're on the right way to seeing higher intelligence emerge from machines in the next few decades.

    Just like in the 1950's higher intelligence from machines was just a few decades away?