Behind the Scenes of The Brain Show

by Zeev Nitsan

  Helen Keller—Sees and Hears

  The skull cavity is like a container of sensory deprivation; the brain does not experience the world directly. Rays of light cannot penetrate—it is dark in there. No sounds are heard—it is quiet in there. There are no fibers transporting pain within the brain, and direct damage to the brain does not ring the alarm bells of pain. Our brain, exactly like Helen Keller’s, is like a blind and deaf person. It creates eyesight and hearing out of the pattern of waves that float across time and space and break on its shores.

  Brain areas function as versatile information processors that are capable of processing a variety of input data. The various brain areas have the potential to be multisensory, which means they can perceive and process information originating in more than one sense. The visual cortex, for example, which normally resides within the occipital lobes, is able to handle input and processing of touch-originated information in blind people. The various types of energy are rendered into the universal brain language of bioelectrical potentials (action potentials). In most areas of the brain, there are no irreversible internships enabling these potentials to perceive and process information only from a single sensory channel. On the contrary, a flexible ability to perceive and process information originated in different sensory channels, according to the circumstances, is a prominent feature of the brain.

  “Sensory conversion” is one of the terms describing brain flexibility, and it includes a promise for the future: super-senses that will enrich human experiences in a manner that is hard to predict.

  The studies of brain researcher Paul Bach-y-Rita revealed a portion of this ability that is mostly hidden from researchers. He developed a rugged plate that was put on the subjects’ tongue, and, after they practiced, the touch-related information produced by their tongue found its way to the visual cortex. There it was processed and translated into a visual experience. So, the licking of a certain rugged plate invoked a virtual image of a cube in the subjects’ brain[5].

  The Pattern of Processing and Maintaining Information in the Brain

  Aphorism

  Aphorism is a concise encoding of information—our brain’s favorite information encoding method.

  Our brain aspires to realize substantial aspects of the experience and preserve them in memory. Only through this concise pattern is the world, as we know it, compressed in the space between our ears. In spite of the different manifestations of entities in the world, there is a certain “preserved pattern” that preserves the core of the information, even when it is enveloped in an ever-changing cover.

  Our brain uses an aphoristic information processing method in terms of quantity and quality of the information. Only a small amount of the sensory input reaches the brain areas designated to process it.

  There is prudent estimation related to depreciation in the amount of information from the visual input while it is transferred through the nozzle of information processing in the brain that constantly narrows its diameter. According to this estimation, out of the almost unlimited information mine around us, an estimated amount of ten billion bits per second meets our retina. Our eyes “mine” only a sample of the input—only six million bits per second “leave” the retina. It may be connected to the limit in information traffic, which is caused by a wiring limit: each optic nerve contains a million axons, which are used for transferring information signals from the retina. Only about ten thousand bits per second reach the visual-processing area in the occipital lobes. After further processing, the information is fed into the brain areas that “build” the world model in terms of visual perception. Surprisingly, the amount of information that reaches the brain areas responsible for producing conscious visual perception is less than a hundred bits per second. This thin flow of information is supposed to represent the enormous body of information out there. The representative aphorism is an effective processing method, but information depreciation and sample representation are built-in features of this method.

  Preserving the Core of Experience—Encoded Aphorism

  The aphoristic information encoding method enables summarization of experience-perception impressions. The ability to identify and encode the key components, which constitute the essential core, is at the basis of our capability to encode memories. It derives from our ability to identify repetitive sequences in the sequence of signals thrown at our brain.

  Names are given to these “repetitive sequences.” The names lie at the core of the summarization process—and this is what brain aphorism is about.

  Brain Aphorism—the Nesting Nature of Information Preservation in the Brain

  Perceptional recording might be compared to a colorful stone in a mosaic of perception memory that is composed of numerous colorful stones. Cells that focus on perceiving and processing of perceptual recording work together, and we move one step upward in the processing hierarchy toward a more comprehensive image. From now on, other areas are responsible for the more comprehensive image. These areas are like “gathering areas for single impressions.” There is a sort of brain aphorism—a summarization of perception impressions in a certain ladder whose top rung is a brief conceptualization. In the case of a verbal conceptualization, the brain-aphorism mechanism is able to summarize it into a single word. This conceptualization is the preserved representation of the whole experience. A lower level of information encoding is contained and nests within a higher level. Thus, it can be viewed as a nesting structure.

  Information learned in detail is represented at a lower cortical level of processing, on top of which a higher information processing layer is built for processing more complex information.

  Cognitive Hierarchy

  Hierarchy of Information Representations

  Information representation is built in a hierarchical pattern. High areas of the representation ladder in the cortex store the representation of the overall essence, and lower areas store the subgroups of which the overall essence is made. The high areas contain the overall picture, which does not change rapidly. The low areas of the representation ladder store the smaller details, which change more frequently. Thus, for example, a high-representation area stores the knowledge that we are residents of planet Earth, and lower areas store the knowledge related to our location in terms of country, county, city, borough, etc. It continues this way until we reach the cortical, lowest level of representation, which preserves our real-time location—the surface under our feet—whose recordings change constantly with each step we take.

  Expert Brain, Novice Brain

  The high levels of information processing in the cortex owe their processing ability to lower levels of processing which processing for them the more basic and raw input patterns. When a new task is first learned, a large number of neurons participate in the learning process. After a while, when the task is already familiar and encoded in lower levels of processing, the higher levels of processing are “set free” for the sake of a more complex processing of the information. This is the difference between an expert brain and a novice brain with regard to performing a certain cognitive task.

  The learning of thinking or movement skills becomes semi-automatic following some practice and memorization. Then, the skill being learned “goes down” as being encoded at a lower neural level.

  Reading written materials is an example of the processing hierarchy function. While we are reading, we focus our attention on understanding the content of the paragraphs—the peak of our reading skills at this moment. Lower levels of processing, which operate on the unconscious levels, constantly identify the letters that sail on streams of sentences in front of our eyes. Once they take this task upon themselves, the lower levels release the higher processing levels to use their “brain power” for processing at the paragraph level.

  The low-processing levels are responsible for the morphological aspect (shape and identification of letters). Higher processing levels in the cortex are responsible for the aspect of the content.

  The odrer o
f the lretets in a wrod is not inportmat as lnog as the frsit and lsatlrtteesramieninthe corecrt place—our brain reads the words as a pattern.

  A young brain, which has not had a chance to build the “upper floors” of world insights, enables us to understand abstract entities and processes the information at the more concrete levels—at a lower cortical processing level. When it reaches sufficient mastery of the information, a higher processing layer will be created that will process the information at a higher level of complexity and sophistication. Thus the brain climbs the ladder of information storing, toward the apple of the Tree of Knowledge.

  In the brain of an expert in a specific discipline, there is a “concise encoding,” which is also a preserved representation—a result of a prolonged, aphorismic learning process. Identification of the code word enables the expert to choose appropriate response options quickly. The brain of an intern is still at a stage where it deals with creating the hierarchic information-representation pyramid (which is similar to the terraced pyramid of the Maya people), and, unlike the expert, he is still far from the pyramid’s top, a point that allows a bird’s-eye view.

  Insufficiency, which is built-in to the situation, characterizes the state of our brain. This is required to deal with a huge amount of information nowadays and to process it in shorter periods of time. Sometimes, certain brain functions fail to keep pace. It seems that information processing according to the aphorism approach might be useful when it comes to the contemporary task of swimming across the ocean of information whose level, though it does not depend on global warming, is expected only to rise.

  A novice brain is mostly slower when it comes to complex tasks, such as the work of an artist, as a result of a lower level of exposure to manners of performing the task. In addition, a novice brain has yet to create complex sets at the top of the neural encoding ladder for the necessary skills for a smooth, flawless performance as in an artist’s performance.

  Thus, the novice is slower and cumbersome compared to an experienced brain, which is considered an expert with regard to performing the complex task.

  In the brain of an expert, conscious focus of the perception regarding raw information, which is processed at lower levels of processing, such as single letters for experienced readers, requires significant cognitive effort, since it is routinely done at the unconscious level. It is possible that, with respect to the more basic information processing levels of complex skills, the novice brain will have some advantage.

  Experience is the Name of the Game

  When human beings are exposed to a new “discipline” of knowledge or to phenomena to which they have never been exposed, brain conceptualization tends to create an “overgeneralization,” which means putting emphasis on the common characteristics and blurring the differences. The similar is perceived as identical. This state reflects the initial learning stage. On the other hand, the brain of an expert in a certain discipline identifies the nuances and tiny differences between similar phenomena and situations.

  The learning curve of most skills is characterized by a sharp slope of the performance curve, which becomes more moderate as more experience is gained in the secrets of the learned skill.

  Time changes in our brain sometimes serve as guides. As we grow older, we tend to deal with problems in a different way and rely more on identification of patterns. Instead of a long and tiresome ascent of the information mountain toward finding solutions, we find a path that elegantly passes the mountain of data—a path for the experienced, who are familiar with the topography of the problem.

  Acquiring Skills

  Sets of Sets of Sets

  The cortex creates information representations for impressions that are perceived in a repetitive manner. These information representations go down the processing ladder from time to time and set free those areas at the top of the processing ladder for learning more complex and sophisticated relations—this is how an expert is made. Thus, the attempt to categorize and regulate the details of the output by means of sets of sets at the time of learning might hasten the process of learning the skill necessary for the creation of an expert. This way, sets are made through encoding, acronyms, generalization, nesting patterns (patterns that nest within more general patterns), etc. Such a way enables the creation of shortened encoding, which brings down simple memory representations to a lower level and sets free the higher areas of the cortex so they are able to absorb new materials. Words, as a means to create sets, enable conceptualization at a lower level of the cortex.

  The Magic of Preserved Representation

  Information-Preserving Rule

  Old insights acquired by our brain during its stepping on life’s paths are mostly here to stay. Insights that were encoded as patterns, whose acquisition was bought by resources of time and energy, and sometimes blood and tears as well, and which were not refuted in various experiences, become resistant to new information that contradicts them. This is how we avoid shaking our core insights as a result of the ever-changing world we live in.

  This approach proves itself as an approach that provides a survival advantage in many cases in which the same essence is reflected in various manners.

  A Loved One Remains a Loved One—The Magic of Preserved Representation

  A central pattern of memory encoding in the cortex is as “preserved representations.” The brain representation of a certain essence remains stable despite the presence of an ever-changing input—for example, when a person is moving away from us or looks sideways rather than forward. This capacity of the brain to preserve perceptual representation, although the related input is ever changing, is called “preserved representation.”

  Thus, for example, the entire visual representation of a familiar person might change miraculously due to factors such as distance, angle, and light intensity if the figure is apparent or partially hidden. Despite the different images absorbed by the retinal carpet, however, we conceptualize the familiar figure and gather the various inputs into a single coherent entity and identify it this way. Our ability to find meaning in the flood of ever-changing information that meets our brain depends on creating a preserved structure in the squirt of information.

  The brain representation of the essential core of a phenomenon might change if contradicting input representations appear and “convince” the truth-determination mechanism in our brain that the new representation is preferable to the previous ones.

  Memory storage and retrieval are done through relying on the preserved representations that allow us to create an internal representation model for phenomena that are external to us or internal (inside our body) to us.

  The neural netting that encodes information has a flexible topology. The nets of neurons often retain their basic pattern, even when they are stretched, widened or shrunk, and this explains how the essential information core is retained.

  The saying “Changed and yet the same, I rise again,” which appears on the gravestone of the Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli (1655–1705), was meant to reflect the nature of the logarithmic spiral. This saying also reflects a basic principle in brain information processing and in the pattern of our human existence.

  The Modular Use of the Building Blocks of Thinking

  The Cycle of Information

  Information that was learned and assimilated wanders from its initial input areas, in which numerous neurons dealt with its processing, to higher encoding areas where it is assimilated and where fewer neurons are in charge of it. The neurons responsible for processing the initial input are now available for processing new input.

  More familiar information goes down the processing ladder in the brain and is assimilated at the neuronal net at a lower level of processing. This descent is in accordance with experience. Information streams downward and upward in the cortex. The brain representations assemble and spread out.

  The hierarchy of patterns with nesting features enables a modular assembly of basic patterns into a fabric of a more complex
information pattern. For example, phonemes and musical notes are interwoven into a more complex work: the melody. The same thing is true for our language as we go up from the level of letters to the level of words and then to the level of sentences, which are formed into a complex tale.

  An ensemble of neurons, recruited for a certain task, is combined in a unique way in a modular form for the sake of performing a designated task.