John Mazziotta - How Do Human Brains Work?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 พ.ย. 2023
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How can human brains run our physical bodies and produce our mental minds? What are the general principles of human brain function? Neuroscience can tackle the physical activities, everyone agrees, but can neuroscience discern the mental? Yes, neuroscience can make progress, but can it completely explain the inner experience of conscious awareness? Ever?
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John Mazziotta, MD, PhD, is the Executive Vice Dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine and Associate Vice Chancellor at UCLA. A distinguished researcher and prolific writer, Dr. Mazziotta is currently Chair of the Department of Neurology, Director of the UCLA Brain Mapping Center, Associate Director of the Semel Institute, and Professor of Neurology, Radiological Sciences and Pharmacology.
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Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
"Unlike a computer, the brain will be able to come up with the same output, the same behavior, from millions of different starting points" - Mazziotta
Wow! That is an immensely profound statement.
My brain doesn't always work.
Mine too😅
3:12 well said doctor...before the structure change , there is function altered. In fact if we go much deeper in to human body we can find the onset of the disease in energy body six months before it manifests physically. Therefore i suggest the doctor to use kirlian photography for further research.
first view, love y’all
Awareness is the only constant of all experience what could be more fundamental to reality than that? Awareness is known by awareness alone.
Lots of great CTT videos on the physical brain and consciousness. As a proponent for the necessity of "value judgments" and how they relate to our contribution to "Existence" as a species, I'm left with a key question: *"Which is considered more 'valuable' in the overall scheme of existence: **_a physical brain or the information a brain produces?"_*
In other words, if you were "Existence," ... which would you consider more _valuable?_
The information a brain produces.
You're implicitly assuming that information can exist yet not in a physical form, but you know my opinion on that. Everything we know about information, every low level study of it, every technology that uses it shows that it is physical, and is manipulated and transformed through physical processes.
However that aside, what is 'existence' aside from the collection of those things that exist? You talk about it as though it were some phenomenon separate from those things which actually exist, but that seems contradictory. For 'existence' to be a separate category from that which exists, it must not itself be in the category of things that exist, right?
@@missh1774 *"The information a brain produces."*
... And I agree. A physical brain seems more like just one of many necessary components that when combined are able to generate information, ... but the information is what it's all about.
It's like an expensive digital camera. It doesn't matter how expensive and hi-tech the camera is; what's most important are the images being captured and the information they convey.
@@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC >"It's like an expensive digital camera. It doesn't matter how expensive and hi-tech the camera is; what's most important are the images being captured and the information they convey."
Sure, but good luck taking pictures without a camera. Where I would agree is that the specific physical instrument or form of the information isn't important. It doesn't matter which camera you take the picture with (assuming the same model), the picture will be the same. Information also has the property that it can be copied, so we can print books, or send a baby picture to all our family.
This duplicability and transmissibility of information is what we mean when we talk about it having a quality of abstraction. It's also at the heart of the concept of substrate independence. However you still do need a camera, and each copy of the picture you send is a physical representation of it. No substrate, no information.
@@simonhibbs887 *"Everything we know about information, every low level study of it, every technology that uses it shows that it is physical, and is manipulated and transformed through physical processes."*
... I see it differently. "Information" can be a nonmaterial structure that is generated and processed by physical structure with the two working together in unison. Information that uses physical structure to propagate doesn't mean that the information is entirely "physical." ... It could just as easily be _hitching a ride_ on tangible things.
*Thought Experiment:* If you're in a room that's painted in a variety of colors, obviously, you're not going to know what colors are on the walls until you walk in and turn on the light.
Now, the physicalist believes that since "physical light" was required to communicate the colors, then the information the colors convey is purely physical. However, the information associated with each color *doesn't go away* the moment the light gets turned off (even though technically no colors are present or visible). All of the different colors painted on the walls and the information associated with each color is _still there_ ... even in the absence of the physical light used to reveal them.
In fact, I could hire someone to paint the walls of that room in specific colors and know what colors they are without ever physically observing the inside of the room. If information is purely "physical" then how is it that I can know this without physically observing it?
*"However that aside, what is 'existence' aside from the collection of those things that exist?"*
... I consider "myself" as something separate from the "collection of parts" that make up my physical body, so why can't I take this microscopic view of "myself" and extend it all the way up to the macroscopic level of "Existence?"
*"You talk about it as though it were some phenomenon separate from those things which actually exists"*
... Don't we do the same in regard to consciousness and the brain? Some say that consciousness is just a bunch of neuron activity whereas others say it's a separate phenomenon that works in conjunction with the brain.
*"For 'existence' to be a separate category from that which exists, it must not itself be in the category of things that exist, right?"*
... It appears paradoxical, I will admit. However, we find this same paradox permeating throughout every other aspect of "Existence" (including ourselves, our brains, and our minds). We're constantly debating if we are more than the sum of our individual parts.
If we cannot incontrovertibly demonstrate that our self-aware consciousness is nothing more than a byproduct of a physical brain, then who are we to claim that "Existence" is nothing more than the individual pieces that make it up?
*BTW:* I'm not knocking physicalism as much as pointing out how it restricts one's ability to consider ideas that are outside the scope of that particular ideology. Science may one day reveal that everything is indeed "physical," and should that day ever come, I would most certainly salute you!
But that day isn't here yet, and I don't like any ideology that restricts my ability to think "outside the box."
So he is talking about FUNCTIONAL MRI? He said functional imaging which I assume is fMRI but it was not clear.
So it is all “Electrochemical Computation & the Topology of the Wires” from his perspective?
The human brain is such a marvel and provides such a great testimony to the power of evolution. When one sees the spectacular workings of the human brain, one wonders how evolution did such a fantastic job in a relatively short time.
Dear Mr Robert, thanks for this interview. It would be wonderful if you could interview Dr. BARBARA ANN BRENNAN.
When you look at the brain, but forget the patience of the being and the natural elements relationship to the entire being, you lack profound insight and innerstanding.
Guys shows brains funcions was afected by stock for example is It normaly obvious . More importante questions is ask him why he dosnt show brains funcions though neurosience proceendings? Why?
_Tell us how _*_your_*_ brain works._
if it took a highly complex srructure (from our perspective) such as a human brain 1 billion years ro evolve (the extreme case).then given the age of the universe, a much complex structure could be expected if the conditions were favorable elsewhere... how would an extremly superior intelligence behave if that was the case... will it still be dependent on matter for energy 🤔
Here's a thought I had a few years ago. Suppose we could construct a simple scale for intelligence to compare ourselves and hypothetical intelligent aliens. Let's set level 1.0 as being the lowest, bare minimum level of intelligence necessary to develop a technological civilisation, and the scale goes up from there as species evolve and advance. Where are we on the scale? Well, we only just in the last few thousand years developed a technological civilisation. That's far too short a time for us to have evolved significantly beyond that, so our level of intelligence is 1.0 on the scale, the lowest possible for an intelligent species.
It's worse than that. To develop technology only the most intelligent geniuses have to be capable of doing it. The rest can just copy them and use the tech they invent. So given that the intelligence of the species covers a distribution, the species will develop technology as soon as only the most intelligent members are capable of it. That could be significantly before the majority of the species achieves that level. If that's true, almost all of us are actually below 1.0 on the scale. 🤪
when looking at the complex chemical reactions that make life possible and compare that with the current state of public knowledge, it seems to me that we have much more to learn and that our level of intelligence is still under development... even organization of a single cell organism requires a degree of intelligence that is yet to be reached by the best current practices... the most recent developments in genetic studies that are taping dna's ability to respond to certain stimuli are yet to reach a state of understanding as to how that process culminates with a fully conscious experience from a complex organ such as the brain... artificial systems that are currently under development have a target that matches just that, human level of intelligence... so it seems as these best efforts have yet to match what biological systems do... self replicating systems as simple as a cell or even bacteria are able to adapt to certain environmental conditions in intelligent ways that are yet to be matched... so, it seems as this level of intelligence has been around for much longer than our own and we don't know if it even started on this planet or it was introduced from outer space... and if that was the case then it is not wrong to expect a more advanced intelligent system than 1.0 (that you described) to be already present in our Universe...
@@r2c3 Comparing the capabilities of computers and biological systems is interesting. You'e quite right that in some ways even 'simple' organisms perform feats computers struggle to match. I say 'simple' because in fact an amoeba is fantastically complicated, it's just very small. This is because organisms are massively parallel, every biochemical mechanism or pathway is active all the time, dynamically responding to the situation, and often involved in multiple behavioural feedback loops simultaneously.
On the other hand computers are screamingly fast at single 'thread' execution. So absurdly fast compared to biological systems that when we do parallelise them, in many areas they can often compete very well.
Take GPT4. The human brain has about 100x as many connections as GPT4, but GPT 'knows' hundreds of times more information than any human does, and can output a whole original essay in seconds. Meanwhile AlphaZero trained itself to play Go from scratch in a few hours, and beat a grandmaster the first time it ever played a human. One of the reasons is ANNs can learn using a technique called back propagation. This is orders of magnitude more efficient than the methods our brains use to assimilate and retain new information.
I was a bit fan of panspermia early on, due to the fact that life seems to have been on Earth from very early on in it's history. Two things have changed my mind. One is the research work on the evolution of naturally occurring chemical feedback loops. It looks like evolutionary processes definitely kick in to develop non-biological systems, and it seems likely we will figure out credible pathways by which primitive life could have evolved in that time span. The other is the simplicity of early life and the very great time period it took, billions of years, for it to develop greater complexity. If life had evolved elsewhere, we would expect early life forms on Earth to have had the advantage of significant evolutionary development already, but that doesn't seem to have been the case.
@@simonhibbs887 GPT4 and other similar systems are getting better over time and it seems as they're not far from reaching your human level intelligence 1.0... but the point I was making is that our conscious level has yet to match the complex activities that biological systems are capable of performing... and if in the near future, super intelligent artificial systems brake the code of life (intelligent level of organic systems, that is) then you can rightfully draw such comparisons and there's nothing left to say anymore... but until then, in my opinion, there's much more work to be done...
@@r2c3 Oh, I see what you mean. It is interesting that we can perform pretty incredible cognitive feats subconsciously, while performing the same feat consciously is incredibly slow and difficult. So for example an experienced chess player in a speed chess game can intuit a good move in a second or so. Actually consciously working out what a good move would be and exactly why in precise terms often isn't even fully possible.
I'm not actually that confident about AI. The recent progress has been unexpected for sure, but seems to be plateauing out. The current LLM approach will produce fantastic tools. It may be a significant step forward towards fully generally intelligent AI, but I suspect there are many more such steps to go and they're unlikely to come thick and fast.
Scientists can’t explain something simple like memory recall. How does the material brain initiate memory recall? How does the material brain tell the material brain what memory it wants the material brain to recall and why? There has to be something immaterial and that’s like an operating system that interacts with the “material” brain. 💯💯
Here's a study that provides a nice overview of how memory formation works and the specific role that ion channels play in synaptic plasticity. It's from a while back and of course we know more now but I still think it's relatively accessible. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1679792/
So that addresses the specific structural and biochemical processes that operate in brain cells. More generally all the latest AIs such as ChatGPT, AlphaZero, StableDiffusion, etc are all neural network systems. We understand how neural networks assimilate, process, store, access and generate information so well that we can engineer it with spectacular effect.
Psychologist have published thousands of peer reviewed papers on memory. Both short term and long term memory.
What do you mean by “memory recall”? Is that you consciously trying to think of the colour of your office door? Is that the brain forecasting a future of worst case scenario because a bill just landed on your doormat? Is that the way you place your shoes next to each other (like your mum always did) ? Isn’t almost everything if not everything to do with some kind of memory ?
In that sense what do you mean “something simple like memory recall”?
Brain is a formal system. A meat computer.
Why aren't scientists working on the most pressing and important issues of our time such as a cure for baldness and immortality? 😂
IQ +EQ +GUIDANCE = TRUTH
IQ +EQ +GUIDANCE = RELIGION, NOT TRUTH
How Do Human Brains Work? these guys have no clue...
Apart from identifying the areas of the brain responsible for various cognitive functions, diagnosing brain diseases, understanding the impact of brain damage, developing surgical techniques, and other medical interventions that improve the lives of millions of people. Apart from that, what did neuroscience ever do for us? th-cam.com/video/Qc7HmhrgTuQ/w-d-xo.html
@@simonhibbs887 You missed the point, a description is not an understanding.
@@hobarttobor686 Taking effective intentional action with respect to a phenomenon requires understanding of the phenomenon.
So he is talking about FUNCTIONAL MRI? He said functional imaging which I assume is fMRI but it was not clear.
So it is all “Electrochemical Computation & the Topology of the Wires” from his perspective?
@@Mentaculus42 It's got to be fMRI, I think it's the only system that can do what he describes. It's fantastic tech, some of the recent studies into using AI to interpret fMRI scans into words, phrases and even music purely from brain activity is incredible. It's literal mind reading.
There are a few other other clips taken from the same interview on the channel on different topics.