Interesting new research into the apparent neurological roots of thinking: Architecture of the Mouse Brain Synaptome, in the journal Cell, at https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S08...18)30581-6 . Article here :
Many neural correlates of consciousness have been known for years, and are assumed by materialist neuroscientists to point to how consciousness must be one and the same as the brain's vast arrays of neurons and synapses, and especially their activities. This new study shows the neural correlates of an example of (primitive) consciousness to an unprecedented level of resolution and complexity. Naturally, a lot of materialists will think that this research is somehow getting closer to the true material nature of consciousness. I don't think so. There is still the mystery of the Hard Problem. And there is still the great volumes of empirical evidence of the ultimate independence of human consciousness and the physical brain, in phenomena such as veridical NDEs. I don't think the neuroscientists are ever going to find what they are looking for with any of the ingenious tools they can develop, because it's a category error on their part.
Quote:"In a technical tour-de-force, a team from the University of Edinburgh in the UK constructed the first detailed map of every single synapse in the mouse brain.
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Using genetically modified mice, the team literally made each synapse light up under fluorescent light throughout the brain like the starry night. And similar to the way stars differ, the team found that synapses vastly varied, but in striking patterns that may support memory and thinking.
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In other words: synapses come in types. And each type may control a thought, a decision, or a memory.
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The detailed maps revealed a fundamental law of brain activity. With the help of machine learning, the team categorized roughly one billion synapses across the mouse brain into 37 sub-types. Here’s the kicker: when sets of neurons receive electrical information, such as trying to decide between different solutions for a problem, unique sub-types of synapses spread out among different neurons unanimously spark with activity.
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The essence of you—memories, thought patterns—seems to be etched into how diverse synapses activate in response to input. Like a fingerprint for memories and decisions, synaptomes can then be “read” to decipher that thought.
But as the authors acknowledge, the study’s only the beginning. Along with the paper, the team launched a Synaptome Explorer tool to help neuroscientists further parse the intricate connections between synapses and you."
Many neural correlates of consciousness have been known for years, and are assumed by materialist neuroscientists to point to how consciousness must be one and the same as the brain's vast arrays of neurons and synapses, and especially their activities. This new study shows the neural correlates of an example of (primitive) consciousness to an unprecedented level of resolution and complexity. Naturally, a lot of materialists will think that this research is somehow getting closer to the true material nature of consciousness. I don't think so. There is still the mystery of the Hard Problem. And there is still the great volumes of empirical evidence of the ultimate independence of human consciousness and the physical brain, in phenomena such as veridical NDEs. I don't think the neuroscientists are ever going to find what they are looking for with any of the ingenious tools they can develop, because it's a category error on their part.