Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
Each new pattern of neural activity occupies the whole bulb. It reflects
context, not information.
Spatial patterns of EEG
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
EEG pattern classification in serial conditioning:
Heraclitus was right.
Lack of invariance of brain patterns with fixed stimuli
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
• Complex partial seizures disrupt normal
behavior.
• Each inhalation opens the landscape.
• Expectancy creates attractor landscape.
• Flat EEG reflects a point attractor.
From Skarda & Freeman (1987)
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
Elizabeth called Descartes on the mind body problem
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
Helmholtz, army surgeon, neuroscientist, 1st law of thermodynamics
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
Charles Darwin 1809-1882
“The involuntary transmission of nerve-force may or may not be
accompanied by consciousness. Why the irritation of nerve-
cells should generate or liberate nerve-force is not known; but that this is the case seems to be the conclusion arrived at by all the greatest physiologists such as
Müller, Virchow, Bernard, and so on.”
The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1863) p. 70
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
Herbert Spencer 1820-1903
Conservation of Nerve Energy
It is “… an unquestionable truth that, at any moment, the existing quantity of liberated nerve-force, which in an inscrutable way
produces in us the state we call feeling, must expend itself in some direction. … An overflow of nerve-force, undirected by any motive, will
manifestly take the most habitual routes.”
Essays: Scientific and Political (1893) p. 109
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
Sigmund Freud
Displacement“[My] approach is
derived from clinical observations of
‘excessively intense’ ideas in hysteria. … I
have in mind the principle of neuronic inertia. It finds expression in a
current passing from dendrites to axon. … Memory is in contacts between the neurons that function as
barriers.”
Sigmund Freud (1893) “The Project of a
Scientific Psychology”, pp. 356-
359.
[Three years later, Foster and Sherrington named the ‘synapse’.]
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
Brain theory collapsed.
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At the beginning of the 20th century,
brain theory collapsed.
Psychiatry and neurology disintegrated.
The reason: ‘nerve energy’ is not conserved;
brains are open, dissipative systems.
Today there is still no accepted brain theory.
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
Gilbert Ryle - Category error
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Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
The rise of information theory
By the 1950s with the emergence of Computational Neural Science,
the failed doctrine of “nerve energy”
was replaced by the new doctrine of
“neural information processing”.
The power of the metaphor: Sources and sinks
Information flow rates Channel capacities
Information as Negentropy
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
Santiago Ramon y Cajal 1852-1934 Superior temporal gyrus
Information Technology begins in the neuron doctrine:
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
Rafael Lorente de Nó
The theory of neural information processing was led by Cajal’s last graduate student, Lorente de Nó.
Rafael Lorente de Nó 1901-1982
The Entorhinal Cortex, 1934
McCulloch & Pitts, 1945 Digital Computers, AI
Donald Hebb, 1949Nerve Cell Assemblies
Frank Rosenblatt, 1956 Neural Networks
Hubel and Wiesel, 1959Neurobiology
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
Self-organized criticality - compare to complex plane
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
Self-organized criticality - action perception cycle
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
“I have already explained what I think of literal representation; but one cannot insist enough on this: there is no true meaning of a text. No author’s authority.
Whatever he may have wanted to say, he wrote what he wrote.
Once published, a text is like an implement that everyone can use as he chooses and according to his means: it is not certain that the maker could use it better than someone else.”
Collected Works, 1957
Paul Valéry
Paul Valéry 1871-1945
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley
Acknowledgements
Walter J Freeman University of California at Berkeley40
The olfactory system
Walter J Freeman
End note
AcknowledgmentsThis work was supported by grants from NIMH (MH-06686), ONR (N00014-93-1-09380, and NSF (EIA-0130352). Human EEG and EMG data were collected and edited by Mark D. Holmes and Sampsa Vanhatalo in the EEG Clinic, Harborview Hospital, University of Washington, Seattle, and analyzed in the Dep’t of Molecular & Cell Biology in the University of California at Berkeley. Data processing and programming were by Linda Rogers and Brian Burke. The animal data were collected in collaboration withJohn Barrie and Gyöngyi Gaál.
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