[MURG] Cortex activity

[Joseph J. Strout]

At 9:08 PM -0400 9/18/03, Thomas Weber wrote:

>I follow it. In such a case multiple instances of one
>person can be created.

That's right.

>  I have read very interesting
>elaborations (yours?)suggesting they would be
>identical minds - same person(s) to start with, but
>would become different individuals as they go on
>building their own independent new experiences on top
>of the original mind.

Right again.  That could have been me, or it could have been somebody 
else; it's a pretty obvious position once you get over the notion 
that 1 body == 1 person.

>This makes sense. It still supports my idea that the
>cortex output could be read and coherently
>interpreted.

In theory, yes, for some parts of the cortex anyway.  (Mainly primary 
sensory cortex -- making any sense of the activity in "higher" 
cortical areas would be quite difficult.)

>  >Thomas: I can see the imperfection of the analogy.
>The information content of the disc is constant and
>does not change by playing it or recording to another
>disc or tape. If we however ask a person to speak out
>his or her entire mind (it would be long) that act
>itself would affect the mind. The new memory of
>telling the story would be added. Also if we think of
>the mind - brain as a recording - playing system - new
>recordings are constantly added and also as we keep on
>forgetting the old issues - old recordings are
>deleted.

Heh, that's an interesting point I hadn't considered.  Sort of a 
Heisenburg uncertainty principle for minds.

>  > Thomas: Thank you for such a stimulating discussion.
>I became so absorbed that other things get neglected.
>This is addictive. I will take the back seat for a day
>or so and do some more thinking.

Fair enough, and thanks to you for a good discussion, too.

Best,
- Joe

P.S. To be clear: I am no longer in the neuroscience field.  I've 
been out of it for a few years now.  I still try to keep up on the 
major developments, but my knowledge of neuroscience is likely to get 
increasingly outdated, especially when it comes to the details.  So, 
for very current insight you should look to an active neuroscientist.

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