Consciousness: We're Not Alone

I've some essays on emergent networks and offer the following clip for your consideration.

JB
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C Elegans Awakens

"Many scientists get nervous if you ask about the consciousness of a housefly or a roach. But sometimes you get an eerie feeling that the partitions separating programs from awareness may not be just thin, but porous." Sagan & Druyan (1992, p. 167).
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Maps of the 302 neurons in C elegans, a small worm, show the 11 ganglia and their clustered organization (White et al, 1986). If loosely connected clusters also underlie the organization of human brains and make human consciousness possible, that same organization could produce consciousness in C elegans, perhaps a very small consciousness but a consciousness nonetheless.

Also consider:

"Networks and Reentrant Signaling

Emergent networks have lately rewarded the attention of mathematicians and physicists (Barabasi, 2002; Buchanan, 2002; Strogatz, 2003). The implications are substantial for theory, explanation, prediction, and intervention in neurology, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. For example, clusters consist of autonomous small clumps of neurons within each of which the members communicate often. The members of one cluster usually act as a unit but there are sparse connections with other clusters that allow synchronization of activity between the two (Strogatz, 2003; Granovetter, 1973).

"These organizations have been seen before in biological and neurological research. The great evolutionary biologist, Sewall Wright, noticed in the 1920s that animal breeders separated their stocks according to the presence or absence of a particular trait but used periodic crossbreeding to prevent the expression of harmful recessive genes (Provine, 1986/1989; Sagan & Druyan, 1992). Wright also applied his model to Ernst Mayr's concept of "founder effects" wherein isolated small populations of descendants, each from a slightly different ancestor form distinct species (Mayr, ). Break the isolation by means of strays, mate-swapping, or wandering minstrels and each community deviates less from its neighbors.

"Hebb ( ) suggested that reverberating circuits that lead to memory formation. In Pinker's words: '...neurons that fire together wire together; neurons out of synch fail to link' (Pinker, 2002, p. 92). Edelman (1987) introduced the concept of 'reentrant signaling' between separate communities of neural clusters. Each cluster both influences and is influenced by other clusters that manage a slightly different aspect of a sensation, action, or memory. Other theorists have pursued similar concepts for understanding the fact of seamless integration between local communities of neurons, each separated from the others in both distance and specialty, an integration that collapses when the long paths beween clusters are severed (Sperry? ; Gazzaniga, 1992; Tononi, 1994; Sporns, 1994).

"Network theory provides heuristic insights into these phenomena but with greater detail than was previously available (Barabasi, 2002; Buchanan, 2002). They also give a different view of the excesses of bipolar disorder and let us see its expression not only by individuals but by entire communities. These insights apply to normal thought as well as to obsessions and their treatments, whether traditional, psychopharmacological, or cognitive-behavioral (CBT)."

Copyright, 2003, James Brody, all rights reserved.

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