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I get the author's beef with the idea that discrete brain areas peform discrete tasks - if there's one thing my neuroscience MSc taught me it's that the brain p

I get the author's beef with the idea that discrete brain areas peform discrete tasks - if there's one thing my neuroscience MSc taught me it's that the brain processes things in parallel rather than series, which is what most of those theories rest on - but I think part of the issue is that we try to impose existing words, like "memory", onto the brain. One of the more productive lines of thinking I used when studying was trying to throw out all of those definitions and try to work from first principles about the kind of processing various areas were doing. Of course it's impossibly complex to get understand it in totality (which is probably partially what drives specialising in particular brain areas), but discarding the limits imposed by language really helped me think more flexibly about what it might be doing. Also, a small nit about the way it was presented was using plasticity (i.e. areas area able to perform different kinds of processing if the inputs change, e.g. blindfold + braille) as evidence of non-specialisation. That's doesn't follow. Just because neurons can be flexible doesn't mean they're not performing a discrete task, although I agree with the general conclusion.

nosianu 6y ago
> a small nit about the way it was presented was using plasticity ... as evidence of non-specialisation. That's doesn't follow. A small nit about your small nit: The article does not make that claim. Quote: > I’m not saying that every neuron can do everything, but most neurons do more than one thing. I mean, it's kind of obvious that all neurons are far from completely interchangeable, like RAM cells on a memory chip, since there clearly is quite a bit of higher level architecture.
- frereubu 6y ago
  That's different - plasticity shows that neurons can change what they do, not that they can do different things at the same time.
imbnwa 6y ago
> I think part of the issue is that we try to impose existing words, like "memory", onto the brain This is also what Freud meant by "time doesn't exist in the unconscious". What we call memory isn't discrete like RAM, nor is it organized around what we perceive as time, these are illusions of how we experience perception and consciousness. He described by suggesting we imagine the modern city of Rome, then, directly physically overlay ancient Rome on top of modern Rome, physics be damned, if an ancient column goes through a modern building, then it goes through the modern building without destroying it, directly occupying the same space at the, er, same time

nosianu 6y ago

> a small nit about the way it was presented was using plasticity ... as evidence of non-specialisation. That's doesn't follow. A small nit about your small nit: The article does not make that claim. Quote: > I’m not saying that every neuron can do everything, but most neurons do more than one thing. I mean, it's kind of obvious that all neurons are far from completely interchangeable, like RAM cells on a memory chip, since there clearly is quite a bit of higher level architecture.

frereubu 6y ago
That's different - plasticity shows that neurons can change what they do, not that they can do different things at the same time.

imbnwa 6y ago

> I think part of the issue is that we try to impose existing words, like "memory", onto the brain This is also what Freud meant by "time doesn't exist in the unconscious". What we call memory isn't discrete like RAM, nor is it organized around what we perceive as time, these are illusions of how we experience perception and consciousness. He described by suggesting we imagine the modern city of Rome, then, directly physically overlay ancient Rome on top of modern Rome, physics be damned, if an ancient column goes through a modern building, then it goes through the modern building without destroying it, directly occupying the same space at the, er, same time