Biomimicry

Presented to the
Cosmo Computer Group

Biomimicry is the art of solving problems by seeing what similar obstacles exist in nature ..then discovering how nature acts to overcome them. One of my favorite examples of biomimicry comes from the story of the Swiss inventor George de Mestral. He was an avid hiker who spent a lot of time removing the burrs that stuck to his clothes at the end of every hike. Curious about how this happened, he examined the burrs and found they contained tiny, hook-like spears that had a natural tendency to attach themselves to the miniature loops found in fabric. He used the same mechanism in the 1950’s when he invented Velcro.

Technical uses: In order to combat biological weapons, the Defense Industry studies the reproductive behavior of insects to see how they detect trace amounts of chemical and biological agents over long distances. In bioengineering, scientists study birds to see how they recognize the songs of their own species in order to come up with better ‘speech recognition’ systems for the disabled. Last year physicists made the first practical observation of ‘quantum teleportation’ ..a trick of nature that could make future computers incredibly small and powerful.

Computer apps: During my graduate studies I tested theories of reading comprehension. A practical application of this was to see if we could develop a ‘natural language interface’ to the computer. This was before the advent of the ‘graphical user interface’. My job was to see how people ‘store and retrieve’ information about what they read, then submit my findings to the computer science department where they programmed ‘text comprehension rules’ for the computer. We were developing a system that could answer questions by querying a computer database. In a sense, we were studying the activity of the mind in order to develop a better interface to the computer.

Concluding remarks: I believe that this type of research has applications in education, helping people with reading disabilities, as well as in the computer industry, helping designers build more ‘intelligent’ search engines.

In a heartbeat

The rhythm of music is my prosthetic for balance. I don’t have a preference ..just whatever moves me at the time. In fact, I find dancing easier than walking ..that’s probably why I go to the drum circle at the park every chance I get. Following a rhythm has helped me learn to walk again ..just as it helped me learn to ski when I was a kid. It puts me in motion so I don’t have to think about every step ..or anticipate every move. I suppose I have my early experience to thank for that ..those teenage years spent at rock concerts. Dr Oliver tells me that stroke victims, people who have lost the ability to speak ..can still sing. When they begin putting their words into a melody ..they can express themselves fluently. What this tells me is that ‘keeping the beat’ is a deeper, more fundamental process, than constructing sentences.

Turns out that most children with dyslexia don’t have a problem with vision. What they have is a gap in their auditory system ..they cannot identify the sound of the words they see ..and until they can do that .. it’s hard to progress much further. That’s why we have to go back and treat dyslexia using auditory training. Now, I don’t know what the church of scientology thinks about this .. I can’t find any of their literature ..only proclamations made by Tom Cruise. But according to Dr Goswami [link] the first language we learn is the sound of our mother’s heart beat. It’s like an internal metronome ..setting the tempo that helps us follow the sound of speech during early childhood. Lately I’ve been pushing the boundaries of my theory ..to the annoyance of those around me. I’ve come to think of it as the rhythm that helps us follow the events in our life. Without it ..everything we see and hear would simply appear as though they were coming out of nowhere ..and disappearing into nowhere. No coherence ..nothing helping us string them together.

In a heartbeat

Many children with dyslexia cannot keep up with the flow of text fluently enough to convert symbols into sound ..then sound into meaning. To read OK, the brain has about 40 milliseconds to do this. For children with reading difficulties, this may take as many as 500 milliseconds. According to Usha Goswami [link] part of the problem may be caused by difficulty in perceiving the rhythm of speech. Goswami and her colleagues discovered that dyslexic children could not track the beat in speech. The ability to detect a beat matters when the brain is trying to process syllables and phonemes. Like a metronome, it helps children pick-up the properties of speech in time. They inform me that the ability to keep the beat is so fundamental; the first language we learn is our own mother’s heartbeat.

KnowledgeNet

A model for the fabric of the mind has been tentatively settled-on [link]. It’s one that characterizes what’s inside my skull as a 3-dimensional network of delicately connected instances of prior experience and feeling. Prior experience is stored on this network in the form of linked propositions (as in predicate logic). This is referred to as a KnowledgeNet and it is necessary for reading comprehension. Reading is an active, constructive process that requires the interaction of elements of text and the KnowledgeNet. The more area on the net that you activate when you read, the more you are able to understand and remember. Under ordinary circumstances, signals from the senses produce ripples that spread out over this fabric, like stones on a pond, activating network-connections until a clear mental representation is formed. However, when something goes wrong, and there’s a disturbance in the fabric, activation may become amp’d and diffuse ..compounding insubstantial phenomena until, what may have started out as a gentle hummingbird, for example .. becomes a ferocious beast. Sometimes I think it’s only a matter of degree between clarity and delusion ..especially when I consider how many times I mistook a perfectly innocent remark as hostility.

Research proposal

Fear Incorporated
The Role of the Amygdala in Anxiety Disorders

Presented to the
Seminar in Neuroscience

“Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.” Arthur Somers Roche

Anxiety is a feeling of dread or apprehension that occurs for no apparent reason. It is distinguished from fear because it occurs in situations where there are no outward signs of eminent danger. It becomes debilitating when it grows out-of-proportion to ordinary events in life. Anxiety is deceptive. First it focuses attention, and then it clamps the brain into rigidity by obsessively replaying past traumas ~>[Read more]

Multi story memory

Presented to the seminar in
COGNITIVE SCIENCE

It wasn’t long ago that psychologists regarded memory as a single-thread of stimulus-response associations; strengthened by repetition. What went on between the time information was stored and retrieved was terra incognito. Memory was commonly thought to be a passive record of stimulus-events. Once events were stored, they became a reliable part of memory. The information was always there; forgetting was blamed on a failure of retrieval. The associative principles of memory no longer apply. They fail to capture clinical reports of patients with aphasia or Alzheimer’s. Aphasia patients can usually remember current events, but they forget long-term information such as the meaning of words or the names of familiar objects. On the other hand, Alzheimer’s patients can remember long-term information, such as the meaning of words, but they forget recent events such as a visit by a relative or their arrival at the clinic. These observations suggest different types of memory at work. Some temporarily hold events in our immediate surroundings while others preserve them on a more lasting basis.   

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Evolution of the neocortex

Findings of Comparative Neuro-Psychology

Presented to the seminar in
SOCIOBIOLOGY

Homage to the Tree Shrew

“The cerebral cortex, of all parts of the central nervous system, must be regarded as the most plastic in recent evolution, reflecting new behavioral requirements of niches carved out by increasingly complex relations between predator and prey, and the increasing demands for more subtle relationships within the species.”   Harting  (1973) ~>[Read more]

Recapitulation theory

Research proposal

Presented to the Seminar in Research Methods

The purpose of this experiment is to test the hypothesis that adults can learn languages as easy as children when the method of instruction simulates conditions found in early childhood.

Transcripts of early speech show a reliable trend. Language development occurs in stages that correspond to increasing degrees of derivational complexity. This means fewer and simpler transformational rules appear in children’s speech before larger sets of more complex rules begin to emerge. In addition, children learn their first language without formal training. It occurs spontaneously. There is no evidence of selective pressure for the development of well-formed sentences. It is an innate process that requires only participation in a verbal community.

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Second languages

Presented to the
Seminar in Learning Theory

Tribute to Noam Chomsky

A survey of the literature suggests that the same learning principles underlie both native and foreign languages. If the focus of instruction is on communicative intent, rather than phonological repetition, then learning a foreign language recapitulates the stages that children follow when learning their first language. Contrary to popular belief, adults may have an advantage over children. Chomsky’s review of Skinner’s ‘Verbal Behavior’ has been hailed as the most influential document in the history of psychology. Nowhere is this more evident than in the recent literature on language development ~>[Read more]

A neurological basis for hallucinatory experience

Senior Thesis

Presented to the Department of Psychology 

California State University, Long Beach

“Each person is capable of perceiving infinitely more. The universe is funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system ..what comes out at the other end is a measly trickle.”

From ‘The Doors of Perception’ by Aldous Huxley

Abstract: The Serotonin Hypothesis offers the most plausible explanation for hallucinatory experience in neuroscience. It is consistent with reports from Anthropologists describing the experience of people participating in Indian peyote ceremonies. It also comes close to reports by Clinical Psychologists documenting the experience of members of the psychiatric population. Neuroscience informs us that a major function of the central nervous system is to filter and reduce information reaching the brain to manageable and ‘culturally-relevant’ levels. The serotonin hypothesis tells us that hallucinations occur when these filters are lifted and areas of the brain involved with conscious experience are released from the constraints they are ordinarily under. Anthropologists report a similar process. They say that the guided peyote session serves to temporarily remove barriers inside the mind and allow for conscious-states that are not ordinarily accessible. I find this compelling evidence in support of the serotonin hypothesis as a model for hallucinatory experience. It also strengthens the argument that peyote sessions could serve as a useful method-of-investigation for Psychologists.

~>[Read more]