Discussion about Emotions

As long as it’s for science!

I can’t help it…our conversation reminds me a lot of a book I read back in grade 11 or 12 called 'modern physics and antiphysics ’ a discussion between a poet and a physicist. Just like then I am only dimly aware of the depth of knowledge but certain that I have a basic understanding. I appreciate the patience and resources you have afforded me. Thank you.

I think the history of the brain points the way forward… much is known about regions and functions but little seems to be discussed about how one system might have been built on another or why? Thought experiment might be a good idea in this regard. We should build from the bottom up…that way we can understand what’s happening at the top.

@jake - you should find this helpful.
@Paul_Lamb - you should like this in light of your work with the Cortical IO retina.
Part of how I keep the interest in the material is to switch focus on regular bases; hence totally unrelated projects are a good idea in education.

There is a reason why education has settled on the model of cycling through different topics in classes. One of the basic principles of neural networks is “orthogonal axis of representation” in the source material to be learned.

If two things are being learned and you have no way to tell them apart they blur into one. What is desired is that as you learn more details they become separable and learn-able. If there is nothing to relate the material to it is just meaningless noise.

During sleep, you consolidate this new information and it becomes available as part of your parsing for new information. This learned material aids in this process of taking in more material - the landscape now has more features to use as landmarks in placing additional material.

It seems that an hour or two of new information seems to be about as much as most students can absorb in a given area of the brain in a day. Then we switch to an orthogonal branch of information and train that up for the day.

It is helpful if this new information adds details to the “edges” of some of the other information being absorbed.

In deep learning, we present the entire body of material with small learning rates to allow this landscape to form, with multiple cycles to allow the orthogonal axis’s and islands to be formed incrementally. Error back propagation is usually the method to determine “novelty.”

If you think about it - the brain uses much the same process solved in slightly different ways.

With humans, we add the novelty and personal relevance coloring to enhance the learning rate as this hour of material is absorbed. I think that personal relevance is self-explanatory and leave the details to your imagination.

Novelty is a different kettle of fish. I am pretty sure that everything you learn is always parsed in terms of what you have learned before. All new learning is “delta coded” in relation to what is already in the cortex. If what you are being presented with is fully recognized then there is nothing novel - no difference is generated to be learned in the hippocampus. If it is not recognized then it is something new to be learned.

The novel “learning” is clustered with the related material with some sort of learned relationship. The proximity between existing material and the presentation establishes this cluster relationship. There must be a chain (no matter how far removed) to the original grounding in our physical body senses and emotional shading to those sensations.

Humor or pleasant surprise (or fear :frowning:) is likely to help consolidate the material. The continuum of the various emotions helps place a value on the material when recalled.

An example of this grouping can be seen in the Cortical IO retina data structure.[1] Yes - the consolidation process adds this delta to the existing cortex to form a more detailed landscape. The capacity of the hippocampus to hold this delta coding is the capacity to learn new material in a given daily cycle.

So recapping - for effective learning:

  • it has to be novel. This is likely to vary by student.
  • It has to be personally relevant. This is likely to vary by student.
  • It has to be orthogonal (linearly separable); you can learn in more than one area each day.
  • New information should be paired is some way with known information. This relationship should be selected to highlight the feature to be learned.
  • It has to be in bite-sized chunks.
  • You have to sleep on it - with good REM cycles to consolidate it.

[1] Cortical IO new video on semantic folding

How does the hippo cope by itself with all those several active-in-the-day areas, in that delta-encoding understanding ?

There has to be a lower level delta encoding in the hippo…what I said earlier …a poor man’s neocortex…I am reminded of an engineering project I saw years ago… there are multiple ways of seeing the world…your vision only needs to be good enough for the hardware. Air hockey table with an automatic goalie at one end…engineers solution…lidar…my solution photo diode array. Which requires more computing power? Of course lidar is more precise but does it need to be? Think about the brain that way and work up!

A very nice paper on the locations of emotions in the cortex.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13599-z
Or here
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13599-z.pdf

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I would also recommend her book: https://lisafeldmanbarrett.com/books/how-emotions-are-made/ (or maybe wait for her forthcoming book)

The theory of constructed emotions was disturbing at first, but it is now something that progressively makes sense for me. The distinction between affects and emotions is helpful to refine the discussion.

Here is my take on this (inspired by Lisa Feldman Barrett):

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Some related thoughts:

Emotions are concepts that are constructed. Emotions are represented in the cortex (and your paper describes the cortical location). Those concepts are useful for our survival (either consciously or unconsciously). We could feel consciously those emotions when those representations are activated and broadcasted through the Global Workspace.

A threat detected / processed by a loop through the amygdala is different from the fear feeled / processed by a loop through the cerebral cortex. The first generally triggers the second, but we may activate the first without the second.

An article by Joe Ledoux:

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I have found this very new online short lecture by Dr. Mark Solms for RI (The Royal Institution) which is very, very insightful and interesting. In my honest opinion, it is titled incorrectly, the title is: The Source of Consciousness with Mark Solms. The title I would find more appropriate is “The Source of Emotions - with Mark Solms”. But this difference of opinion in the title does not subtract any value from the very insightful lecture. I highly recommend to watch this if you can spare an hour. It is quite compact and very well delivered. I think his logic is that emotions are the source of consciousness. This may be partially true, but does not cover my definition of consciousness, which encompasses more than emotions. Dr. Solms brings in a very brilliant point, though. From an evolutionary point of view, all life has been driven by homeostasis, which is the processes that maintain our bodies within a given range of order. Homeostasis counters entropy. All of our cells would die if left to the fate of entropy (which is basically the second law of thermodynamics proving that matter always drifts toward chaos and randomness if left alone). All lifeforms counter entropy and establish homeostasis which is the order needed for metabolic life. Watch the video and you will not regret it in my opinion, it is brilliant.

I believe, like Dr. Solms states, that the source of emotions and thus foundational consciousness does reside in the (primitive) brainstem. The reticular activating systems (RAS) also, by the way, regulates some foundational aspects of attention. We need the RAS, for example, to filter the voices from the background noise at a cocktail party. So this brainstem does have a very fundamental role in our mental functions. It makes sense also from an evolutionary perspective. But the insight of homeostasis as the mechanism (the pendulum) of maintaining order and fighting entropy (the second law of thermodynamics) is absolutely brilliant. Life cannot exist with uncontrolled entropy. Life by definition is natures ability to create self-regulating systems that maintain homeostasis, the balance needed for all metabolic organisms to exist. And self-replication adds the ability of these systems to evolve under different environments. It is logical that evolution would bring about adaptive strategies to maintain a stable homeostatic state in a given environment. And as self-replicating populations adapt to new environments through mutations, evolution ensures the adaptability of lifeforms. And with the emergence of animal life, after the Cambrian explosion 540 million years ago, the animal kingdom would develop nervous systems capable regulating behavior (emotions are our evolutionary regulation of behavior) based on the homeostatic state of the individual and the predictive ability to secure this healthy, necessary state. This is all brilliant!! The neocortex (the pallium) also added a very large extension to our cognitive capabilities. This clearly also extended our capabilities of self-awareness. An awareness of self in a given environment and our ability to also change that environment in order to secure our homeostasis. This extended self-awareness is what makes us human. We are aware of our ability to modify our environment and also to feel empathy for other beings (other persons or agents). This the next level of awareness, our social awareness. We are aware of what others are aware of and even worried about what others are not aware of. This is evolutions next level. So I would also infer, that is also the next level of consciousness.

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Legendary Quote to be kept in mind:
Nothing in Biology Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution

Author(s): Theodosius Dobzhansky

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A bottom-to-top neuropsychonalytic tour of the Psyche, from the viewpoint of Friston’s Free Energy Principle - exactly following the outline of Freud’s 1895 “Project for a scientific psychology” (itself an ENERGETIC treatment).

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A book from the 90s explaining emotions as built on affects.

Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self
– March 17, 1994
by Donald L. Nathanson M.D.

"This is a revolutionary book about the nature of emotion, about the way emotions are triggered in our private moments, in our relations with others, and by our biology.

Drawing on every theme of the modern life sciences, Donald Nathanson shows how nine basic affects―interest-excitement, enjoyment-joy, surprise-startle, fear-terror, distress-anguish, anger-rage, dissmell, disgust, and shame-humiliation―not only determine how we feel but shape our very sense of self.

For too long those who explain emotional discomfort on the basis of lived experience and those who blame chemistry have been at loggerheads. As Dr. Nathanson shows, chemicals and illnesses can affect our mood just as surely as an uncomfortable memory or a stern rebuke. Linking for the first time the affect theory of the pioneering researcher Silvan S. Thomkins with the entire world of biology, medicine, psychology, psychotherapy, religion, and the social sciences, Dr. Nathanson presents a completely new understanding of all emotion."

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What I find to be increasingly fascinating is the fact that so much convergence of ideas and concepts is taking place, between authors like Lisa Feldman Barret and Mark Solms (see my post just further below). The role of homeostasis from an evolutionary point of view and allostasis as a variable mechanism also used to preserve homeostasis, give emotions a clear root in biological needs for sustained life, as well as in early evolution. And these ideas themselves are riding atop, beautifully, some of the most recent emerging theories on paleontological-genetics and archeo-genetic research. Following the trail of genetic evolution and understanding processes promoting speciation (the emergence of species) especially beginning in the Cambrian explosion, we can observe that increasing biological complexity has not only been constantly centered on preserving homeostasis to counter entropy, but also on the emergence of complex eco-systems (with symbiotic relationships). Our vertebrate nervous systems always followed the principle of securing homeostasis (form follows function, and the ultimate function is homeostasis). The very existence of multicellular organisms is simply an evolutionary strategy to better adapt to changing environments and thereby secure homeostasis. Homeostasis, in my opinion, would be better described as self-sustaining extropy (extropy being defined as the opposite of entropy). The very definition of life is the emergence of extropy, a process challenging the dominance of entropy in this universe. All organic chemistry supports extropy, while all inorganic chemistry drifts into entropy, governed by the second law of thermodynamics.

The emergence if higher emotions, which build upon the foundational affects which are more directly based on physiological processes for homeostasis, is a very insightful addition, that does not contradict any of the above mentioned concepts. Higher emotions are most likely extensions which include the vertical integration of neural pathways into the neocortex. Thus, these higher emotions are cultural in nature and able to include higher levels of abstraction. Emotions as such are evolved mechanisms to control behavior for the extended goal of preserving homeostasis. These higher, culturally shaped emotions are the result of social (group) evolution. Survival and adaptation as seen in the evolutionary stages of life on earth, has always extended its complexity. At the starting point, it was prokaryotic, single cell homeostasis that constituted life. This evolved into eukaryotic single celled life, which further evolved into multi-celled life, with cell-specialization and the emergence of a soma and a germline in all organisms. Symbiosis and eco-systems gained in complexity and vertebrates with complex nervous systems evolved. At all times, homeostasis was like the flame of life which was passed on from generation to generation and must be preserved. As the neocortex developed and grew in order to enable higher degrees of adaptation based on group collaboration, social evolution, including the higher, culturally influenced emotions started defining the critical red path of evolution. It now remains to be seen whether human intellect will now be able to artificially synthesize this acquired heritage from natural evolution and transpose the process into machine based intelligence and machine-based allostatic homeostasis in the sense of preserving extropy. Perhaps forms of extropy beyond organic chemistry.

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