Welcome to the worlds of Steven Michael Harris (Author, Theorist, Educator and Performer).
A cell participates an many different decisions and can do so in very different realms of information. What I call a "cellular event" is a decision involving a particular group of influences from a particular group of cells firing in a consistent way to send a signal to a particular cell. This is a theoretical event that describes the way a cell reacts to a particular set arrangement of influences from a particular grouping of cells that are providing input to that cell. This cellular event is a constant and theoretical because it is statistically very rare that the influences affecting a cell are ever exactly the same. The point of understanding the cellular event is to understand how a cell can learn to change it's response to the same influences over time. To describe this event as a static unchanging arrangement rather than the real changing and animated coordination of firings is helpful to keep confusion down when trying to understand this information.
(It is theoretical also because some events would lead to greater excitation in the next events, but theoretically these events, after a number of repetitions, would be accelerating the excitation at a reduced rate and thus would be inhibited in a sense; or the greater excitation at one point would overload other points downline causing inhibition in a global way.)
The point of the theoretical cellular event that will be constantly mentioned is to show how constants lead to changes in the nervous system because of the math in which sensitivities to inhibition grow with constant activity or activity over time because of the mathematical edge that inhibition holds over excitation.
Remember that one nerve cell can, at different times, be the host of many thousands of different cellular events that deal with a piece of many different kinds of information and decision-making.
The same cellular event (handling inputs from the same combination of cells) can occur in more than one nerve cell. There is duplication of logic in the brain. But the nature of constant flux in the brain and the circular logic (the shared networks of connection that lead to an ability of a cell to influence it's own firing) make it almost impossible for any two cellular events to be exactly the same even though it is possible for thousands of cells to be handling pretty much the same unit of information. Therefore cellular events (the same decision or same bit of information and bit of consciousness) can move from cell to cell. The logic moves to the best location that can handle the information. The logic used to process visual information is no different than the logic to process any other sense of understanding. So it is easy for the brain to naturally reassign regions of the brain to different tasks. This is why scientists have noted that particular cells can change their purpose over time (especially after brain damage occurs).
There is no genetics that assigns functions to regions of the brain. The assignments change because of a natural mathematical logic in the nature of how cells relate to each other and groups of these cells relate to different realms of information. Genetics can only have a partial influence on that natural logic. (Think of a brain growing like a crystal that assumes certain characteristics because of the nature of the substance that crystalizes. The final shape of the crystal is a result of mathematical factors involving the repeated influence of the geometry of the smallest particles and their attractions repeated over and over and not some final shape that was "genetically" predetermined even though the final shapes have a lot of consistency of characteristics.)
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Copyright © 1997-2008
steven michael harris
Lexington, virginia, usa