Of scientific interest, the human brain when engaging in memory retrieval actually seems to follow more or less what bees do when they forage, and bee behaviour seems to follow a similar pattern to human excitatory/inhibitory nerve signals.
You mean how bees can memorize their route to the best flowers? They can, yes.
Patterns repeating themselves? No. The pattern of movement is like when they initially start foraging in a new area. They don’t really know where anything is, so they hop in a vaguely circular pattern around the hive.
Now the bee dancing behaviour… When bees return to the hive to share that they have discovered pollen, they each do a descriptive “dance” pattern which gets the attention of other bees in the hive as it naturally should.
I think one pattern tells how close or far away the source is. Well, it covers that and more. What they have discovered is that the bees examine each dancing bee, and respond to the pattern indicated either by beginning to imitate it or interrupt it. If they can’t make sense of the dance they begin to “head butt” the dancing bee. It isn’t an attack, but it does discourage the pattern.
So let’s say you have two patterns being displayed in the hive, right? As each dance plays out the information spreads through all the individuals of the hive, either recruiting more bees or causing more head butting, and eventually one pattern wins out and the hive adopts that as the new foraging site. Each bee acts as a unit in the hives collective computing capacity.
Would you call that “intelligent” behaviour? I would yes, because the same behaviour occurs in human behaviour as well. You can have two trains of thought playing out, and one will either recruit more neurons or inhibit firing neurons until one pattern surfaces to your conscious awareness. A hive is selective of where they forage.
So not only consciousness, but also choice and consensus-reaching. Yes, indeed.
Ok. I was sharing how bee hives and human neurons more or less work in comparable ways. So the next point that will relate to today’s topic of Therians, besides the beehive and human brain connection, is savantism and genetic memory. Shall we continue?
They have traced acquired savantism to a location in the brain, and though it’s very rare, the instances of acquired savatism have arisen because disabling this region of the brain, though it modifies some brain function, leaves the bulk of the brains function alone. The left temporal parietal lobe, if this is compromised without being destroyed, it impairs some language ability, but seems to dis-inhibit other parts of the brain. But even more strangely, a person can show insight and skill in things they have never received any exposure to or training in.
They speculate this is the surfacing of genetic memory which may have some substance to it with the new insights into the principles of genetics and genetic information storage and computing.
Would seem to contradict much learning theory. Yes, but even that is beginning to undergo radical revision even now in the mainstream students of the subject.
Skinner is getting skinned! Indeed, his model was crude and really of questionable scientific integrity even.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~