{"title":"Organisms With Nervous Systems","authors":"D. Purves","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Definitions of the term “animals” in dictionaries and textbooks are surprisingly vague. The characteristics usually mentioned are eukaryotic, multicellular, heterotrophic, sexually reproducing, and capable of rapid and independent movement. But some or all of these properties are characteristic of many organisms in the other kingdoms of life on Earth. In fact, the major distinguishing feature of animals in most cases is the presence of a nervous system. But if nervous systems are indeed one of the main attributes that distinguish organisms in the animal kingdom, what exactly are nervous systems and what advantages do they bring? Without at least some provisional answers, seeking the operating principle of neural systems would be futile.","PeriodicalId":254794,"journal":{"name":"Brains as Engines of Association","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121839500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Major Options","authors":"D. Purves","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"Given the argument and evidence that the operating principle of nervous systems is to generate neural associations on a wholly empirical basis, it makes sense to compare this framework with other ideas that neuroscientists have proposed for understanding brain function. These concepts fall into several broad categories: (1) neural operation based on detecting, computing, and representing stimulus features as such; (2) neural computation and representation based on statistical inferences about physical reality; and (3) neural operation based on efficient and/or predictive coding. Another concept pertinent to all these ideas, including neural operation as empirical association, is whether nervous systems are carrying out computations. This section reviews these conceptual options and some implications that follow.","PeriodicalId":254794,"journal":{"name":"Brains as Engines of Association","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130152870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Putting the Question in Perspective","authors":"D. Purves","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Basic to the question of whether or not the brain and the rest of the human nervous system have a simple operating principle are some central facts about biology and its relation to neuroscience. What nervous systems do is best appreciated in the context of what all organisms must accomplish in order to survive and prosper, with or without neural assistance. Although the author’s understanding of these issues is no more than that of any other student who pays a modicum of attention to the broader sweep of scientific progress, this chapter considers some points of consensus. The aim is to situate the quest for a principle of neural function in the context of biology writ large.","PeriodicalId":254794,"journal":{"name":"Brains as Engines of Association","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130789311","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Evidence from Geometry","authors":"D. Purves","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Dealing successfully with objects and conditions in the world entails another basic visual category: the geometry of objects. This domain is also rich in perceptual phenomenology that needs to be explained. The problem in understanding perceived geometry is much the same as the problem of understanding lightness values and colors: biological vision lacks the tools—in this case rulers, protractors, radar guns, laser range scanners—needed to measure geometrical reality. As a result, the geometries we see always differ from the measured parameters of the physical world. The aim of this chapter is to consider geometrical examples that further support the conclusion that vision operates by ranking perceptual values according to the frequency of occurrence of biologically useful stimulus patterns.","PeriodicalId":254794,"journal":{"name":"Brains as Engines of Association","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129372191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Evidence from Motion","authors":"D. Purves","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"Perceived motion is defined as the apparent speed and direction of objects that are translating and/or rotating in three-dimensional space. It has long been clear, however, that the perceived speeds and directions of moving objects disagree with physical measurements of motion. With respect to speed, the flash-lag effect has been a major focus; with respect to direction, the emphasis has been on the effects of apertures. These phenomena—and many others—raise the question of how we routinely succeed in the world despite blatant discrepancies between the motions we see and the physical speeds and directions of the objects we must deal with. Resolving this puzzle presents another body of evidence pertinent to whether empirical ranking is the way nervous systems link objective and subjective domains.","PeriodicalId":254794,"journal":{"name":"Brains as Engines of Association","volume":"69 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116401466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Neural Associations","authors":"D. Purves","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"If the operating principle of nervous systems is making trial-and-error associations among neurons by accumulated learning over evolutionary and individual time, a next step is to define “associations” more exactly and to review the ways they are created. Neurobiologists have generally focused on the cellular mechanisms that alter synaptic structure, physiology, and biochemistry as a result of individual experience (“neural plasticity”), while psychologists have approached neural associations from the perspective of behavior. Neuroscientists of all stripes agree, however, that associations are based on the connections among neurons and neuronal populations. This chapter examines more specifically how neural connectivity evolves, how it arises during development, and how it is modified over animal lifetimes.","PeriodicalId":254794,"journal":{"name":"Brains as Engines of Association","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128356221","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Problem","authors":"D. Purves","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Although understanding neural functions has progressed at a remarkable pace in recent decades, a fundamental question remains: How does the nervous system relate the objective world to the subjective domain of perception? Everyday experience implies that the neural connections on which we and other animals depend link physical parameters in the environment with useful responses. But that interpretation won't work: biological sensory systems cannot measure the physical world. Whereas something is linking sensory inputs to useful responses, it is not the physical world that instruments measure. How, then, have we animals met this challenge, and what is it that we end up perceiving? The purpose of this chapter is to suggest how nervous systems have evolved to deal with the inability to convey the objective properties of the real world.","PeriodicalId":254794,"journal":{"name":"Brains as Engines of Association","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123481546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Organisms Without Nervous Systems","authors":"D. Purves","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"According to current estimates, the kingdoms of life on Earth comprise at least 8.7 million eukaryotic species (protists, fungi, plants, and animals) and many more prokaryotic species (eubacteria and archaebacteria). The fuzziness of these numbers is understandable: new species are being discovered daily, and extant species are going extinct, as they always have. Whatever the number may actually be, the great majority of past and present species don’t have nervous systems. Thus, before asking what function or functions nervous systems add to animal biology, an obvious question is how organisms without them get along so well. This chapter explores the answer.","PeriodicalId":254794,"journal":{"name":"Brains as Engines of Association","volume":"282 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121369650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Evidence from Audition","authors":"D. Purves","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"The reason for using vision as an example in the previous three chapters is that more is known about the human visual system and visual psychophysics than about other neural systems. But this choice begs the question of whether other systems corroborate the evidence drawn from vision. Is the same empirical strategy used in other sensory systems to contend with the same problem (i.e., the inability of animals to measure the actual properties of the world)? Based on accumulated anatomical, physiological, and psychophysical information, audition is the best bet in addressing this question in another modality. This chapter examines whether the perception of sound can also be explained empirically as a way to deal with a world in which the physical parameters of sound sources can’t be apprehended.","PeriodicalId":254794,"journal":{"name":"Brains as Engines of Association","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128894597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Organization of Nervous Systems","authors":"D. Purves","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190880163.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Nervous systems employ some or all of the senses to convert energy at the level of receptor cells into neural information. This conversion generates electrochemical signals carried centrally that, via a series of additional neurons, determine behavior. The most obvious behaviors are those mediated by skeletal muscles, cardiac muscles, smooth muscles, and glands. But motor responses are members of a longer list that includes attention, perception, emotion, memory, thought, motivation, and others. How to describe these additional “systems,” and how to decipher what the relevant circuits do and how they do it, are unanswered questions. This chapter describes the main features of neural processing, asking whether the principle of neural function is simply to make associations that lead to useful behaviors.","PeriodicalId":254794,"journal":{"name":"Brains as Engines of Association","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125941733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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