h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

More on wetware, mechanics. The nervous system operates on fundamentally different principles from the digital computer, best demonstrated at the 'machine language' level in the sensory and perceptual apparatus in the 'opponent process' model.

First demonstrated in studies on visual sensation and perception, it proved that there are four opponent process pairs governing visual sensation and perception, represented by six distinct neurotransmitters: white and black on your night vision rods, red and green on your red sensitive cones, green and red on your green sensitive cones, blue and yellow on your blue sensitive cones. The first term in each of the four pairs is called a 'component', the second an 'anti-component'. Of the colors we see, only white, red, green and blue are represented by 'sensations'. The others are all 'perceptions'.

The system operates at the level of visual sensation so that when a light sensitive cell in the retina registers a sensation, this generates firing of the neurotransmitter representing that sensation, and then in a reflexive action, the anti-component neurotransmitter is fired, cancelling the neurotransmitter registering the primary sensation.

Of these neurotransmitter pairs, the white and black component/ anti-component pair is the one that corresponds most closely to the "1"s and "0"s of a binary code.

Things get more complicated when one gets into visual perception. The color 'yellow', for example, doesn't appear in our visual sensorium, instead is always a perception, originating in the visual cortex when approximately equal numbers of red sensitive and green sensitive cones are stimulated simultaneously, which in turn stimulates specialized cells in the perceptual array immediately behind the the sensory array of the retina. The neurotransmitter coding for 'blue' then fires as the perceptual anti-component for 'yellow'.

Opponent process mechanisms are not limited to vision, but also can easily be demonstrated throughout the remainder of our sensory array (hearing, touch and taste and at least some of the olfactory sensations).

Also opponent process mechanisms can be demonstrated in emotion, which is always an interplay of perception and apperception. (Love and hate,
elation and despair....)

On this last, the neurotransmitters representing for example 'fear' are identically the same for human beings and lobsters, which means that the evolutionary root must go back at least to the annelid.

Coooooooool post! Very interesting, thanks!

...or warm!

flattery will get you anywhere

Thats why we use it!

Well the old desk top is still on line, I keep checking in case it goes like it did last time
I was just thinking, when I first got that computer I was too scared even to remove the cover, now I go into it like opening a car bonnet (or hood to our USA folk)
What made it even better for me, was I had just finished spending all that money on it just before it packed in, so I feel like it was worth it now
Smudger.

Thanks for the info. The trouble is, when the mechanics of the brain are explained we tend to think of it all as hard and mechanical, when in reality it's just wet spongy stuff. Hence 'Wetware'.

Jab

my memory, is like a broken VCR, it records ok, but can't use the replay button

A broken VCR made of sticky, gooey sponge-like stuff. Try selling that on eBay!

Jab

it's good stuff in my head, one of a kindeven I don't know how to use itit's still in the shrinkwrap

You must be quite a sight walking down the street then Prof!

Jab

at the best of times, reputation to uphold

Jab

you know it don't come easy

but keeping it is a doddle

IE:
posts 874/5 and 883/4
F19585?thread=3951593&skip=860&show=20

reputation grows

and grows and grows

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F2137311?thread=5241564&show=20&skip=0#pi7 then we'll see how big your repuation is..

cheeky

that looks

Just a weird idea i'd had for ages and having a few free moments i thoguht i'd see what hootooers thought!