NEXT STORY
Homunculus and the origin of language
RELATED STORIES
NEXT STORY
Homunculus and the origin of language
RELATED STORIES
Views | Duration | ||
---|---|---|---|
51. A theory of consciousness: Language | 759 | 04:38 | |
52. An experiment to test re-entry | 630 | 01:43 | |
53. Consciousness: A process not a thing | 874 | 01:43 | |
54. The process of re-entry | 588 | 00:52 | |
55. Homunculus and the origin of language | 533 | 03:21 | |
56. Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace | 1 | 545 | 02:03 |
57. The idea of self and consciousness | 636 | 02:59 | |
58. Conscious artifacts | 451 | 03:13 | |
59. Complexity and Darwinism | 442 | 04:27 | |
60. Trying to complete Darwin's work | 1 | 574 | 04:42 |
What I'm stating is that the fundamental process underlying consciousness necessitating a... a particular kind of anatomy exemplified by the thalamus and the cortex, the thalamocortical re-entrant connection, is the process of re-entry. But that re-entry of course had to develop through evolution to give an adaptive capability that was... that enhanced fitness of animals – and that is that the ability to make huge numbers of discriminations through such a system, the dynamic core, which is highly dynamic and changeable; that that allowed planning and thus advantage during evolution. And that, subsequent to that, the invention of language across some other re-entrant domains allowed us to go to where we are – the ability to deal with truth and fiction and science and art and what have you.
US biologist Gerald Edelman (1929-2014) successfully constructed a precise model of an antibody, a protein used by the body to neutralise harmful bacteria or viruses and it was this work that won him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1972 jointly with Rodney R Porter. He then turned his attention to neuroscience, focusing on neural Darwinism, an influential theory of brain function.
Title: The process of re-entry
Listeners: Ralph J. Greenspan
Dr. Greenspan has worked on the genetic and neurobiological basis of behavior in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) almost since the inception of the field, studying with one of its founders, Jeffery Hall, at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, where he received his Ph.D. in biology in 1979. He subsequently taught and conducted research at Princeton University and New York University where he ran the W.M. Keck Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology, relocating to San Diego in 1997 to become a Senior Fellow in Experimental Neurobiology at The Neurosciences Institute. Dr. Greenspan’s research accomplishments include studies of physiological and behavioral consequences of mutations in a neurotransmitter system affecting one of the brain's principal chemical signals, studies making highly localized genetic alterations in the nervous system to alter behavior, molecular identification of genes causing naturally occurring variation in behavior, and the demonstration that the fly has sleep-like and attention-like behavior similar to that of mammals. Dr. Greenspan has been awarded fellowships from the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation, the Searle Scholars Program, the McKnight Foundation, the Sloan Foundation and the Klingenstein Foundation. In addition to authoring research papers in journals such as "Science", "Nature", "Cell", "Neuron", and "Current Biology", he is also author of an article on the subject of genes and behavior for "Scientific American" and several books, including "Genetic Neurobiology" with Jeffrey Hall and William Harris, "Flexibility and Constraint in Behavioral Systems" with C.P. Kyriacou, and "Fly Pushing: The Theory and Practice of Drosophila Genetics", which has become a standard work in all fruit fly laboratories.
Tags: consciousness, brain, re-entry, thalamus, cortex, evolution, language
Duration: 52 seconds
Date story recorded: July 2005
Date story went live: 24 January 2008