Slashdot Mirror
Cerebellum More Involved In Cognition Than Previously Believed (npr.org)
Rick Schumann writes about the findings of a new study published in the journal Neuron: A team of neuroscientists from Washington University in St. Louis, performing fMRI tests on 10 people to quantify the various connections between the cerebellum and the rest of the brain, are now being led to believe that the cerebellum actually plays a role in conscious thought, whereas previously it was believed it was only involved in sensory-motor function. What they found is that it appears that only 20 percent of the cerebellum was dedicated to physical motion, while the other 80 percent serves as an "editor" of the conscious thought process, refining and filtering thoughts in a sort of background process. This discovery may lead to changes in the way psychiatric patients are treated for disorders like schizophrenia, depression, and obsessive-compulsive behaviors.
Research like this may take us a small step closer to figuring out how a human brain actually 'thinks', leading us to being able to create real Artificial Intelligence, not the ersatz we're seeing right now. This research also serves to highlight how little we actually understand about our own brains.
It's sad that even hippies have outwitted you by such a large margin. Republican nazi faggotism might be mitigated by marijuana, but you're too cowardly even to try it? Sad. Stick to beer-rape instead, concepts you can comprehend.
(My condolences to your mother, the probable rape victim)
Refining thought? OK fine. But filtering? So that even "I" don't know what my cerebellum has discarded, before "I" think it? Before "we" think it? Heaven help us all.
When *I* was in schools the known function of the cerebellum was shaping what would otherwise be ballistic movement. Say you reach out to touch a dot at arm's length; your finger traces a smooth, precise, efficient curve. Without the cerebellum you'd just fling your arm in the general direction of the dot. We were taught the crebellum was a like an enormous, high speed, nerve impulse shaping co-processor. The structure of the cerebellum is kind of like a co-processor, lots of similar looking, repeating modular units.
The motor-only view of the cerebellum has been obsolete for 20 years or more. In any case it always seemed curious to me that such a large brain structure would be dedicated to that movement shaping function; it's not as if human gross movements are any more complex than other animals.
Maybe the cerebellum originally evolved to shape physical movement, but evolution is the ultimate hacker; it doesn't care what things are for, it cares what can be done with them. It's a bit like building supercomputers from GPUs; it's not what GPUs used to be for, but it works.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Fucktards are over-represented among Anonymous Cowards. Maybe fucktardedness is a mental disorder -- much like voting for the Fanta Menace for POTUS. xD
True dat, Trump voters only "think" with their amygdalas.
That's why you get that odd feeling in the back of your head when you have strong conflicting emotions. You can feel yourself at work if you just stop and pay attention.
Hence the phrase "Something in the back of my head is telling me..."
Really rough analogy: cerebellum is the CPU, cerebrum is the GPU. Other stuff is networking.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Main Brain: "I don't care Leg, dogs can't look up, isn't that right Cerebellum?"
Cerebellum: "Uhh, yeh boss"
Main Brain: "See, two brains! Dumb ass Leg"
Certainly understanding human cognition will help AI development. But AI will no more be a copy of a biological brain than an aeroplane is a copy of a bird.
Because without those, you can detect brain activity in a dead fish by fMRI.
https://www.wired.com/2009/09/...
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
Leftists are over-represented among pot users.
Maybe Leftism is a mental disorder.
Hey faggot, your AUTISM is showing, did your keeper lose track of you? You're not supposed to play on the internet, you'll just have one of those fits you have, then they'll have to wrap you in a blanket again until you calm the fuck down.
"The brain is increasingly linked to thinking! Scientists express astonishment!"
It's common sense...
Which is fine if not for the fact that medicine draws absolute conclusions that affect you based on incomplete knowledge.
But that's science right?
And how much do we really know about the atmosphere and climate? And yet engineers and scientists are stepping up with "solutions".
It's not that science is incomplete, it's that people (profiteers and politicians) will try and make you believe it is.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.