The Halle Berry Neuron.
At the end of the last episode, I was talking about closure. Conveniently, the following news item provides an occasion for speculating about closure as it might work with brain modules.
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When scientists sampled brain cell activity in people who were scrutinizing dozens of pictures, they found some individual cells that reacted to a particular celebrity, landmark, animal or object.
In one case, a single cell was activated by different photos of Berry, including some in her "Catwoman" costume, a drawing of her and even the words, "Halle Berry."
The findings appear in a part of the brain that transforms what people perceive into what they'll eventually remember, said Dr. Itzhak Fried of the University of California, Los Angeles, a senior investigator on the project. The researchers tested eight people with epilepsy who'd had electrodes placed in their brains so that doctors could track down the origins of their seizures.
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The cell described for Berry was acting like a concept of Halle Berry. I don’t know that this was the only neuron acting as the Halle Berry concept so I prefer to talk about the Halle Berry module. I speculate that people have a module like this for each of the concepts they can use effectively. For face concepts, the process would operate something like this:
An initial recognition set is established. Example: Do you recognize this person?
With a face (real, photograph, drawing) in your visual field, analyzing modules with face specialization go to work and generate activity in proportion to the features in the face. Each module specializes in a particular feature. One module might specialize in round faces and be activated by Leonardo de Caprio, Another might specialize in long faces and be activated by John Kerry. Analyzer modules would have strong connections to the appropriate concepts. An active round-face module would activate your concept modules for de Caprio, and for anyone else you know with such a face.
Initially, all of your face concept modules would be slightly activated by the question and your recognition that what you see is a face. When the face analyzers get to work, the concept modules would be further activated by the inputs that represent how well the face matches each of the features. Recall the pandemonium model. Each module is shouting. But one is getting ahead of the others. When it gets enough ahead, it shouts so loud that everybody else shuts up (reciprocal inhibition).
This event is a kind closure. You may say, with mild satisfaction, “Yeah. I do recognize that person.” You may not be able to say the name (tip-of-the-tongue phenomena). But your concept module had signaled closure of phase 1. The module probably has a good connection to the name module (over in the verbal system). But the connection may not be good enough to activate the name module. In that case, you may start drawing on other information accessible from the concept module. You may be able to say: “This is a movie star from black and white pictures around 1950. He played bad guys. He played in “The Maltese Falcon”. He played in “Arsenic and Old Lace”. He was a small man. He generally played a subordinate role. He had a soft voice with subtle menace.”
If you have seen these movies, you probably know who I am talking about. You can probably say, “Not Humphrey Bogart. Not Sidney Greenstreet.” You my not know the name. But you are sure your could recognize the face. You may be able to form an image of the face. And you probably can remenber the distinctive voice. You are probably sure that you could recognize the name if I gave it to you. The initials are P. L.
The additional information may activate the name. You may have a direct connection from the Maltese Falcon module to the P. L. module, since he was prominently listed in the screen credits. The Maltese Falcon module may thus be able to send additional activation to the P. L. module.
But wait. Would anyone spend time trying to remember the name of a movie actor? Have you ever seen that happen? Why would people do that? The only reward you get is a sense of closure when you remember the name. And perhaps some cognitive reassurance that your memory hasn’t started to fail yet.
I am going to refer to the actions above as starting and closing a module process. I will think of it as like stating and closing a computer program. The opening is initiated by a question or something else that carries an implied objective requiring the activation of a module: “Who is this?” Closure normally occurs when all relevant parts of the module have been sufficiently activated to meet the objective. In this illustration, the full name of P. L. would reach a level of awareness that allows you to speak it.
Now I will suspend the discussion. If you have not yet reached closure on the name, you will probably find that the started module continues to run (Zeigarnik effect). Perhaps you will think of it later. Perhaps you will think of it in the middle of the night. Perhaps you will wake tomorrow morning with closure on the name.
Or perhaps you will think more about closure. In any case, I will.
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When scientists sampled brain cell activity in people who were scrutinizing dozens of pictures, they found some individual cells that reacted to a particular celebrity, landmark, animal or object.
In one case, a single cell was activated by different photos of Berry, including some in her "Catwoman" costume, a drawing of her and even the words, "Halle Berry."
The findings appear in a part of the brain that transforms what people perceive into what they'll eventually remember, said Dr. Itzhak Fried of the University of California, Los Angeles, a senior investigator on the project. The researchers tested eight people with epilepsy who'd had electrodes placed in their brains so that doctors could track down the origins of their seizures.
----
The cell described for Berry was acting like a concept of Halle Berry. I don’t know that this was the only neuron acting as the Halle Berry concept so I prefer to talk about the Halle Berry module. I speculate that people have a module like this for each of the concepts they can use effectively. For face concepts, the process would operate something like this:
An initial recognition set is established. Example: Do you recognize this person?
With a face (real, photograph, drawing) in your visual field, analyzing modules with face specialization go to work and generate activity in proportion to the features in the face. Each module specializes in a particular feature. One module might specialize in round faces and be activated by Leonardo de Caprio, Another might specialize in long faces and be activated by John Kerry. Analyzer modules would have strong connections to the appropriate concepts. An active round-face module would activate your concept modules for de Caprio, and for anyone else you know with such a face.
Initially, all of your face concept modules would be slightly activated by the question and your recognition that what you see is a face. When the face analyzers get to work, the concept modules would be further activated by the inputs that represent how well the face matches each of the features. Recall the pandemonium model. Each module is shouting. But one is getting ahead of the others. When it gets enough ahead, it shouts so loud that everybody else shuts up (reciprocal inhibition).
This event is a kind closure. You may say, with mild satisfaction, “Yeah. I do recognize that person.” You may not be able to say the name (tip-of-the-tongue phenomena). But your concept module had signaled closure of phase 1. The module probably has a good connection to the name module (over in the verbal system). But the connection may not be good enough to activate the name module. In that case, you may start drawing on other information accessible from the concept module. You may be able to say: “This is a movie star from black and white pictures around 1950. He played bad guys. He played in “The Maltese Falcon”. He played in “Arsenic and Old Lace”. He was a small man. He generally played a subordinate role. He had a soft voice with subtle menace.”
If you have seen these movies, you probably know who I am talking about. You can probably say, “Not Humphrey Bogart. Not Sidney Greenstreet.” You my not know the name. But you are sure your could recognize the face. You may be able to form an image of the face. And you probably can remenber the distinctive voice. You are probably sure that you could recognize the name if I gave it to you. The initials are P. L.
The additional information may activate the name. You may have a direct connection from the Maltese Falcon module to the P. L. module, since he was prominently listed in the screen credits. The Maltese Falcon module may thus be able to send additional activation to the P. L. module.
But wait. Would anyone spend time trying to remember the name of a movie actor? Have you ever seen that happen? Why would people do that? The only reward you get is a sense of closure when you remember the name. And perhaps some cognitive reassurance that your memory hasn’t started to fail yet.
I am going to refer to the actions above as starting and closing a module process. I will think of it as like stating and closing a computer program. The opening is initiated by a question or something else that carries an implied objective requiring the activation of a module: “Who is this?” Closure normally occurs when all relevant parts of the module have been sufficiently activated to meet the objective. In this illustration, the full name of P. L. would reach a level of awareness that allows you to speak it.
Now I will suspend the discussion. If you have not yet reached closure on the name, you will probably find that the started module continues to run (Zeigarnik effect). Perhaps you will think of it later. Perhaps you will think of it in the middle of the night. Perhaps you will wake tomorrow morning with closure on the name.
Or perhaps you will think more about closure. In any case, I will.
posted by Selby Evans at 1:36 PM
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