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New Map IDs the Core of the Human Brain
gerald626 writes "An international team of researchers has created the first complete high-resolution map of how millions of neural fibers in the human cerebral cortex — the outer layer of the brain responsible for higher-level thinking — connect and communicate. Their groundbreaking work identified a single network core, or hub, that may be key to the workings of both hemispheres of the brain. So basically our brain is a network connected to a hub. I wonder if I can get an upgrade to a GigE switch?"
You would not want a switch. Isolating all but broadcast packets to just their destination would stifle creativity. It has to be a hub and bandwidth in a highly-interconnected net may be unimportant.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
So basically our brain is a network connected to a hub.
Now it's just a matter of figuring out the protocol used and hooking up a few brains together. Seriously
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Humans need to start defining the brain in terms of their rights -- specifically, that nobody has a right to read, write, or interfere with information within these nerve centers against our wishes.
Not at ANY age, nor for ANY contract or job application.
I suggest you read Slashdot
I'd like to see the maps of both the male and the female brain. The female brain is smaller but has a larger hub between the RH and LH of the brain. That is why females can think of many things at ones. Another big difference between males and females is that males fixate all the power of their brains on a single thing, while females spread the power of their brain of many things. So the male and the female brain must differ a lot. It should be quite interesting to compare both brain maps.
Here be signatures
There is a theory of conciousness that can get some support from this hub thingy.
Basically, why are we conscious? Apart from the world becoming much more boring it should be some kind of biological advantage to evolve that way.
The theory states that consciousness is similar to a theater. With only one stage and one focus of light.
Attendants to the play are all the brain subsystems.
Actors are all the subconscious process wanting to become conscious (the current inputs of senses , memory, etc.). They compete for the focus of light.
When one of them get the focus, all the attendants can see him so it becomes and input for the other modules of the brain.
So, conscious process are slower and it takes much more resources, but allows to broadcast information to anyone. It can be modeler like a hub, isn't it?
...Prof. C. McGinn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_McGinn) Quote: ...He goes on to point out that "if one could know everything about your brain of a neural kind ...its anatomy, its chemical ingredients, the pattern of electrical activity in its various segments ...the position of every atom and its subatomic structure ...everything that that materialist says your mind is, do I thereby know everything about your mind? It certainly seems not. On the contrary, I know nothing about your mind, I know nothing about which conscious states you are in ... and what those states feel like to you ... knowledge of the brain does not give me knowledge of your mind. How then can the two be said to be identical?"...(The Mysterian Manifesto: Shakespeare, McGinn and Me, http://www.observer.com/node/43473)
> Their groundbreaking work identified a single network core, or hub, that may
> be key to the workings of both hemispheres of the brain.
Important, yes. Key to the Big Picture, i.e. consciousness? Doubtful. Your brain is really two brains, each lobe capable of thought and consciousness without the other. People can and do have hemispherectomies, believe it or not, and still remain conscious.
I wonder if anyone like this ever understood AI and could describe the experience, though.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.