2024-09-10 9.360 - neurobiology of self

#update
parents:: 9.360 - neurobiology of self
daily note:: 2024-09-10

Summary

Started off talking about some big, high level questions: how do we know that our reflection is our "self"? That my eyes are my own?

Also learned about some basic neurobiology stuff. Once again, I'm struck by how well designed our bodies are. How evolution has managed to create (robust) wires and logical gates. All these crazy ion based mechanisms. Amazing stuff.

Learned

• notion of self that comes from self consistency
• optogenetics! people are so smart.

Questions

Posed by Fan

• How do we know that X is ours?
  • Vision
  • Smell
  • Taste
  • Reflection
• How does self persist?
  • When the going on in our brains are so fleeting, so changing.
    • This part reminds me of statistical mechanics stuff... like emergent degrees of freedom that persist despite the changing of underlying microscopic things.

My questions

• How do we know our thoughts are ours?
  • We talked about our senses, reflections. These are all things that have some external component. What about thoughts, which seem to be purely internal?
• How important is the social aspect to self?
  • Does self exist absent social interaction?
  • If you were to take a baby, and have them grow up physically (have proper nutrition, have to end up learning how to find food, survive) but without any social contact, would they still have a sense of self? Would they recognize their reflection in the mirror
    • sort of like the wolves story
• Are there levels to sense of self? Components that are can appear independently of each other, but which all contribute to "sense of self"?
  • Many animals don't recognize themselves in the mirror. But, perhaps they still have other parts of self?
• Meta/long term: what are the measurable aspects of sense of self?

To look out for/high level goals

• statistical mechanics for neurobiology of self
• can groups (societies) have a sense of self

Raw thoughts

• optogenetics! so cool!
  • what can it be used to do?
• "something to think about. what is thought?"
  • now that's a circular statement!
• what makes me think that now is the time that we can actually get a handle on the self?
  • this is something that philosohpers have been thinking about for centuries, probably milennia.
  • Why now?
    • Neuroscience techniques?
    • AI
• questions raised by Fan
  • How do we know that X is ours?
    • Vision
    • Smell
    • Taste
    • Reflection
• questions I have
  • how do we know that our thoughts are ours?
  • are we backfilling thoughts?
    • in our dreams, are we conscious? are we ourselves?
      • it does feel like we have agency...
      • also, the information that we are dreaming is available to our brains. but not to our consciousness
      • why do we forget our dreams?
• ideas
  • story: an elevator ride through the spinal chord
    • seeing more and more complex behaviors