Mirror neurons and audio question

[William Gaatjes]

I want to ask something about mirror neurons but first i will explain something why i ask this question.

The thing is, i have seen these youtube video's and read some articles.
The point is that although some people will not have any emotional feeling or discomfort when looking at pictures with different people making lot's of different facial expressions, they do feel the emotions when listening to music when someone plays an instrument or someone actually sings a song from the "heart" and not from the wallet.

My question is , do mirror neurons also fire when emotionally charged sounds are perceived ? Or is this some other neuron circuitry that are also mirror neurons but instead of processing some high level information of sight, these mirror neurons process high level information from sound ?

I have some links here, but after doing some google, most is based on sight and not on sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzMqPYfeA-s&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmEsGQ3JmKg&feature=related

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron

http://www.autismcoach.com/Mirror%20Neuron Theory.htm

Now when looking at blind people( from birth), i would guess this is the case.
Because these people do not have the ability to see you with the eyes. Yet i think i can safely assume that when a blind person touch and scan you with their hands that person can build a map of your face and know how you feel. And they can hear your emotional state too. This could mean we have different mirror neurons or the "sight" mirror neurons are fed with information from these senses as well.

This also could mean that the human conscience is based on an inner virtual world that is mapped to the outside world by the senses and motor neurons.

I am a bit getting of topic here, but that could kind of explain that in the beginning when we are born there is just rage and chaos and later on this chaos and rage is becoming a less chaotic world because of sensory input.
The rage turns into a need to learn and the chaos makes room for ordered and structured information. It seems that octopuses have mirror neurons too, yet they seem like us to have very little instinctive behaviour. All the instinctive behaviour seems to do is ignite some process that kick starts the brain into scanning and learning mode. But this is just my theory and dream of ever building a little robot that would be able to learn on it's own. If i ever will, i will change my name into Gepetto.

On another side note, i wonder if some people are very able to mimic the function of mirror neurons on a conscience level or have a processing center in between the mirror neurons and the limbic system. Thereby bypassing this automated process with some ability of choice.


Does anybody have any opinions or facts of their own on this subject ?

EDIT :

Extra link , song birds with mirror neurons.
http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/2008/01/songbirds-also-have-mirror-neurons.html

And one about octopuses

http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2007/04/platformindependent_intelligen.php

 

[William Gaatjes]

I am a bit getting of topic here, but that could kind of explain that in the beginning when we are born there is just rage and chaos and later on this chaos and rage is becoming a less chaotic world because of sensory input.
The rage turns into a need to learn and the chaos makes room for ordered and structured information. It seems that octopuses have mirror neurons too, yet they seem like us to have very little instinctive behaviour. All the instinctive behaviour seems to do is ignite some process that kick starts the brain into scanning and learning mode. But this is just my theory and dream of ever building a little robot that would be able to learn on it's own. If i ever will, i will change my name into Gepetto.

I have to clarify something, in all honesty, we have a smooth brain at six months of development and in the last 3 months before birth, our brain develops it's characteristic texture surface of mountains and canyons because of the genertion of massive amounts of neurons that are created at the inner part of the brain and then migrate outwards to the surface. And even after birth our brain is still developing. When this process of learning starts i do not know, i just mentioned "born" as a simplified point in time. Being born is something that is recognizable.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Hai guys, I was thinking that maybe there are Martians, and I was wondering what color their hair might be?

Because this is highly technical.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Hai guys, I was thinking that maybe there are Martians, and I was wondering what color their hair might be?

Because this is highly technical.

:whiste:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)

 

[DominionSeraph]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody

 

[William Gaatjes]

If you would know anything about this, you would know that the concept of an inner virtual world which is nothing more then a mental representation of the outside world is highly likely. It can be the reason behind for example phantom pains like what people feel when they have lost limbs. Another clue can be the fact that our brains are far to slow to do detailed movement like they do in a feed back way. Thus our brain works in advance. It seems very likely from studies that our brain has a ballistic nature. This means that a trajectory is plotted in the mental representation of the surroundings and this plot is being fed to the part of the brain that controls movement. When we want to grab something we reach and then we start using feedback which is why we slow down in the last part of the motor action just before grabbing. The reason why a robot with a powerful processor can move more accurate and faster and position faster then we do is because it can use feedback all the way and it can process that information faster then we can. We do it ballistic the first part and when we almost get there we switch to feedback based movement. And it does not matter that if it is visual based or touch based. Which is in anyway a lot slower. Now how much information about the surroundings and level of detail that can be stored depends on the species. At the moment we humans seem to be the ones that can store the most detailed information. But then again , there is no way for testing that quality for at least another 50 years.

A "simple spider" able to plot trajectories to catch a prey.
Notice that it went from 8 eyes to just 2 for stereo vision.
That is interesting indeed. Just a coincidence ? Who knows.
It uses the other eyes for detection only it seems...
It is called Salticidae or jumping spider.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_spider

Hunting a bee.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxbuysNGLOM&feature=related

following a mouse pointer on a monitor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGq7eIpia9A

Jumping Spider, inpressing a lady , turn up the volume.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D92AUXhYZ0M
And close up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTbHpV_zFjE&NR=1.

http://tolweb.org/Salticidae

As a child i saw a documentary about it. The researchers did a lot of lab tests, where they made it impossible for the spider to jump directly to the prey. They created a maze looking like a tree for the spider to get to it's prey. The spider plotted the trajectory in advance by looking from a distance and overlooking the maze. After that without making taking a single wrong turn or error, it sneaked right up to it's prey. They also did some tests where they let the spider look at a monitor with some of the spiders natural prey moving around on a video being played. The spider did not move, but they captured it's inner eye movements with a camera. The spider followed the prey with it's eyes on the monitor and never let it getting it out of sight. All this combined seems to prove that even this little spider has some basic internal mapping skills. As tiny as it is. It can predict and plot the best coarse to catch it's prey. What it does is ballistic in nature. It predicts a possible trajectory.
EDIT :
A better word is predetermine : To determine, decide, or establish in advance. Now is that not exactly what we do when we think something over ? Instead of being impulsive we think things over. Instead of acting immediately , we play different scenario's in our mind and we decide which scenario is best to take. And the scenario will take place in the real world. Well hey, how about that... And how do we get information in, mirror neurons. Because these neurons do high level tasks.


How our eyes seem to do it ?

http://babylon.acad.cai.cam.ac.uk/people/rhsc/oculo.html

http://books.google.nl/books?id=gbJ...nepage&q=eye%20movement ballistic&f=false


EDIT :

To clarify :

A saccade is rather a remarkable performance. In Man, the eyes move together at up to some 900 degrees per second, bringing the gaze smartly on to the the new target within as little as 25 msec. Yet the mechanical properties of the eye and its muscles are rather sluggish, responding to a step change in innervation with a slow movement that may take half a second or more to complete. The speed is achieved by means of a sophisticated control system in the brainstem, that sends a cleverly-coded pattern of excitation to the muscles. This consists of a burst of very high-frequency activity, that throws the eye to its new position, followed by a tonic signal that is just what is needed to hold the eye in position once it's there. What is even more clever is that all this has to be done without the benefit of feedback, since visual signals that might tell the oculomotor system that the target had been reached would arrive long after it had overshot. So the system has to be ballistic, working out in advance what pattern of innervation to use from its knowledge of where the target is. In fact, some recent work suggests from Guitton's group suggests that this might in fact be done by a using a sort of virtual reality, with a neural theatre in a structure at the top of the brainstem called the superior colliculus. Here, combining visual information with internal feedback signals about what commands are being sent to the eye muscles, a sort of drama seems to be played out in which - rather as in the gun-aiming computers of World-War II battleships - the presumed position of the eye is plotted in two dimensions, and a command issued to stop the evolving movement at the moment that it seems to be on target.

Of course, in real life there are many objects in the world around us that might be targets for saccades, so in addition to neural machinery in the brainstem to get the eye on to a designated target, we also need mechanisms higher up for choosing what target to look at in the first place. Some of this selection seems to be done in the frontal part of the cerebral cortex, where there are units whose firing seems to reflect the processes of choosing and discriminating between targets. Work on saccadic reaction times in humans seems to suggest that the brain runs a kind of race between signals representing different possible targets, with more probable targets starting nearer the finishing post than less probable ones. There is also a huge random element, rather like a gratuitous random handicap, so that reaction times are very variable even when the stimuli and conditions are absolutely constant. This may well represent a deliberate mechanism for making sure our behaviour is not too predictable by our predators (and you may like to think of it as the neural mechanism behind our illusion of 'free will' - see One-way Cartesianism.)

 

[DominionSeraph]

None of which necessitates "mirror neurons."

You're trying to build a house on sand. Check yourself.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I found at least the portia, it was about the portia jumping spider. The documentary i have not been able to find. To bad, it was a great view.


This is the portia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWX-jEvhMZk&feature=related

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_(genus)

Portias often hunt in ways that seem intelligent.[2] Their favorite prey appears to be web-building spiders between 10% and 200% of the Portia’s size. Portias look rather like leaf detritus caught in a web, and this is often enough to fool web-building spiders, which have poor eyesight.[2] When stalking web-building spiders, Portias tries to make different patterns of vibrations in the web that aggressively mimic the struggle of a trapped insect or the courtship signals of a male spider, repeating any pattern that induces the intended prey to move towards the Portia.[3] Portia fimbriata has been observed to perform vibratory behavior for three days until the victim decided to investigate.[citation needed] They time invasions of webs to coincide with light breezes that blur the vibrations their approach causes in the target's web; and they back off if the intended victim responds belligerently. Portias that retreat may approach along an overhanging twig or rock, descend down a silk thread and kill the prey. Other jumping spiders take detours, but Portia is unusual in its readiness to use long detours that break visual contact.[3]

Female P. fimbriata in its web

Laboratory studies show that Portia learns very quickly how to overcome web-building spiders that neither it nor its evolutionary ancestors would have met in the wild. Portia’s accurate visual recognition of potential prey is an important part of its hunting tactics. For example in one part of the Philippines local Portia spiders attack from the rear against the very dangerous spitting spiders, which themselves hunt jumping spiders. This appears to be an instinctive behavior, as laboratory-reared Portias of this species do this the first time they encounter a spitting spider. On the other hand they will use a head-on approach against spitting spiders that are carrying eggs. However experiments that pitted Portias against convincing artificial spiders with arbitrary but consistent behavior patterns showed that Portia’s instinctive tactics are only starting points for a trial-and-error approach from which these spiders learn very quickly.[3] However they seem to be relatively slow "thinkers", which is not surprising as they solve tactical problems by using brains vastly smaller than mammalian predators'.[2] Against other jumping spiders, which also have excellent vision, Portias may mimic fragments of leaf litter detritus.[citation needed] When close to biting range, Portias use different combat tactics against different prey spiders. On the other hand they simply stalk and rush unarmed prey such as flies,[4] and also capture prey by means of sticky webs.[3]

Ofcourse You do not need mirror neurons for hunting. You do not want to know your prey feels agonizing pain while you devour it. Get real.

That is one of the functions of the limbic system, hunting. The only predator shedding tears when it chomps in it's prey is the crocodile. And it does not do that because it feels bad for it's prey, no highly likely because it's powerful jaw muscles create so much force and because of this during expansion the tear glands get squeezed.

Mirror neurons are handy in social interaction and for learning by copying. Since spiders are solitary animals this makes sense that they do not posses mirror neurons the way we do. But what i was doing was giving a possible explanation of how all could have evolved in parallel since it is common in nature to develop a certain feature in totally unrelated situations. When the jumping spider mates, it is a set of movements to enchant the spider. Possible based on confusion or enchanting of the female created by the male to prevent the female from eating the male right away. Which makes sense if you are a solitary hunter killer that will eat anything that moves.

No i was giving my possible explanation of where the conscience mind comes from. The first start was an internal detailed mapping of the outside world.
The next step was being able to use the stored information to play out possible scenario's. Then take action based on the best scenario and not take action solely on instincts(which is nothing more then preprogrammed locked behaviour). This means problem solving.

Now who needs this information : Yes, a predator. Our ancester was a highly aggressive predator but needed to be able to be social as well. How do you get social ? mirror neurons. And social does not have to mean being nice, it can also mean behave in coherence together. Like a flock of birds or fish move as a single entity when a predator arises ? Bingo...

I am guessing here, but i am willing to bet that the same behaviour of those birds and fish have the same principle behind it as our mirror neurons do.
Because we may have been good predators once, but we are vulnerable as well. Our ancesters where not on the top of the food chain but somewhere in the middle. Being social protects you from other predators hunting you. Being a problem solver means you are a predator hunting your own prey.
Let evolution take it's coarse with rolling the dice of variety.

EDIT:
Forgot one thing though, Aggression ,very handy as a motivation to get things done. Modify aggression a little, in the sense of weakening it and you get assertiveness. Aggression in a social situation. Combine it with undertaking action or an attempt, and what do you get ? Motivated problem solving in a social structure... Very primate like does it not ? ...
END EDIT :

It al makes sense , but then again this is my opinion based on the information i found while being interested in why things are as they are.

To come back to cephalopods, these seem to be solitary animals as well. Yet they still have mirror neurons. Which just shows that the complete picture is not here yet. Perhaps are cephalopods not as solitary as we think and are they quite social. Then again, many different subspecies exists and thus many different possibilities arise.


When are you going to provide some information ? You still do not provide anything ?

:whiste:

 

[William Gaatjes]

It is a bit of topic but i found another link about these lovely spiders...
There seems to be a complete explanation about these spiders.

http://tolweb.org/notes/?note_id=65

http://tolweb.org/accessory/Jumping_Spider_Vision?acc_id=1946

Because the retina is the darkest part of the eye and it moves around, you can sometimes look into the eye of a jumping spider and see it changing color. When it is darkest, you know the spider is looking straight at you, because then you are looking down into its retina.

The brain of a jumping spider includes a comparatively large region for visual processing. In fact, the brain of a small jumping spider may take up about the same volume in proportion to its body as does ours. (Of course, this doesn't mean jumping spiders are smarter than we are, since the absolute size of the brain is what is more important.) The brain is shown in blue in this picture:

This video made me laugh ...

A jumping spider shadowboxing it's mirror image.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iND8ucDiDSQ&feature=related

 

[William Gaatjes]

After i viewed the movie of the spider with the mirror , something got me thinking ?

If hypothetically speaking a person would never look in the mirror and never would see his/hers own reflection once. And then would from a distance be encountered with a mirror that looks like an entrance of a cave or hut. Before that person realizes that it is his/hers reflection, would a person not respond in the same way as the spider saying hi or something while assuming that the reflection is actually someone different ? If i would think then about mirror neurons, these mirror neurons would rapidly tell that there is no time difference between making the smile and seeing the same smile in the reflection of the persons own image. Mirror neuron circuitry would in such a situation actually help with learning your environment and the internal mental mapping of ones body.

Well from what i gathered so far to build my own device one day, here is a small summary :

#1 : Two camera's are needed with focus control/aperture control. The angle between the 2 camera's and the object of interest permit's triangulation. And the focus/aperture feedback signal can be used to do some z ordering of what is seen. This way basic information arises about the outside world and depth perception becomes possible.

#2 : being able to detect geometic shapes from the raw data.
As used by insects.
How does a bee's eye for example detect geometric shapes on for us similair plants and flowers ? ultraviolet vision.

http://web.mit.edu/9.670/www/lecture2_insectsFeb82001.pdf
Again geometric shapes.
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/C/CompoundEye.html
Look at the pictures of the flowers in our visual spectrum and in uv spectrum.
It all comes back to geometric shapes.

#3 : mirror neuron functionality in the sense of detecting just that mirror situations.

#4 : Generation of a 3d map.
Neurons are to slow for complex fast feed back systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_potential
Here i am still searching, the step between vision and a simplified inner virtual reality that is a simplified representation of the real world.
I think the observation of salticidea or jumping spider will provide some creative idea's.

An answer may be hidden in the generation of the saccade signals of eye movement and generation of other complex patterns as described a few posts above. According to the researchers this can be because of some simplified mapping of the outside world and the body itself.

Maybe there is a connection between a very early form of this internal mapping of the outside world and the generation of ballistic movement patterns.
EDIT : Maybe if you increase this functionality , you get some very crude form of basic conscience.


In essence , the principle is the same difference between a stepping motor without feedback but which makes regular steps, and by this you know in advance the amount of steps you are going to make and thus the angular displacement of the axis of the rotor. And a dc motor with a feedback encoder to determine the angular displacement of the rotor of the dc motor in real time. With the stepping motor you can do it in advance, with the dc motor you need to know it's position in real time.

This means internal mapping of the outside world is needed. But because of the faster nature of electronics, the movement control can be done with feedback all the time. A separate processor can be used for this that receives commands of where to move and has some "basic" sensors of it own. This all to do automated movement on it's own. As is seen with some insects, cephalopods and some reptiles. When the limbs get severed , they continue to move.

#5 :
After that a set of directives or instincts as motivation is needed. The instincts set of a certain amount of random behaviour depending on the amount of present energy levels in the accu for example or the amount of light as another example when being powered by solar energy.
EDIT :I do not know where to place this under, but curiosity can be another directive. If no "food" is needed, go wonder about and look around. Afcourse adding directives to accomplish taks is a possibility too.

#6 :
Basic emotions, the emotions could be quantified in for example this way :
If i would have an operating system. And that operating system would have afcourse to execute processes. Now some of these processes have something unique. Because the priority of these processes depends on the emotion. Thereby, the operating system can favour processes causing specific behaviour. Every one of these mid level processes would be created depending on input from sensors, or from input of instincts, the so called low level processes.

#7 : The secret is the set of rules where each instinct activates a certain emotion. And the simulation of sensor input. Feed the answers of this simulation back into the system and another process will arise. I have not yet fully figured it out yet. But in the end, the processes will battle each other for highest priority. This seems to be a theory what is actually happening in the brain where groups of neurons fight eachother over who has the command at that specific timeframe. The process that wins, gets executed and this will lead to certain behaviour. This would be the high level processes.


My opinion is then :
All this does not seem to have anything in common. Going back to real life nature. There is a possibility of sharing genes through horizontal gene transfers by the use of bacteria and viruses. That way you can get a feature A from species a to species b. When it does not kill species b or seriously debilitate species b, the gene lives on in species b as well. The hidden link of chance where there is a hidden correlation called evolution. For instance, at very high altitude the atmosphere is filled with bacteria, viruses, seeds and pollens and other simple forms of life. These all spread through out the atmosphere. What you do on position a, might very well affect position b. Afcourse depending on what you are doing at position a. It is not chaos, just not always that obvious to see. In simple form you can write it down as :

Result = Effect_A * weightfactor_A + Effect_B * weightfactor_B + Effect_C * weightfactor_C + Effect_D * weightfactor_D ... etcetera...

The weightfactor is a signed float. The effect input is a unsigned number but is a signed floating number as intermediate result when multiplied with the weight factor. The result is a signed float too.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Result = Effect_A * weightfactor_A + Effect_B * weightfactor_B + Effect_C * weightfactor_C + Effect_D * weightfactor_D ... etcetera...

The weightfactor is a signed float. The effect input is a unsigned number but is a signed floating number as intermediate result when multiplied with the weight factor. The result is a signed float too.

I posted this above.

Now, if i would replace the weightfactor with another concept like gain or attenuation. I would have an input which influence on the result depends on gain.

For what i have read so far about neurons, here is a simplified idea :
It sound like an electrochemical synaps. Where the electrical signal can be increased or weakened by the use of chemicals. The firing of the neuron can then be controlled not only when an input signal arises, there is also a way to weaken the input signal or actually make it stronger. Increasing it's effect on the end result which is that the neuron will fire. And that output signal is going to another dendrite.

Now this all reads to me like multiply and add. Is that not a MAC function found in processors and dsp's and other specialized processors like GPU's ? I really wonder if part of our brain is really nothing more then a large number of MAC's where the results are used by special decision circuitry to decide which outcome is best.
MAC is parallel and so is our brain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotransmitter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiply-accumulate

 

[William Gaatjes]

I was thinking about geometry detection.
In nature there is no real hard smooth surfaces.
Then i was reading about Mandelbrot. Now i am sure somebody already has done this though...

If i use a sort of Mandelbrot recognition system i wonder if that would work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set

The thing is, in nature you will find the same repeating function when you look for example in the forest. Now how would you know something is separate from the background scene ? The first possibility is purely check on movement and compare the moving formation of pixels with some constant or as is better done, a previous stored image to tell the difference and direction of movement..

Another idea : What i wonder if it would work, is to do some Mandelbrot check. If something stops repeating in mandelbrot function while zooming out, i would know i have something seperate...

Hmmm....
Maybe the best is just to make an x and y map as discussed in the lecture.pdf.



I have to add though, that mandelbrot formation sure looks like crystals growing.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I love this, it is possible an old but a great view.

Autonomous robots contest.


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6917200224135375895&hl=en&emb=1#docid=8719876587754396524


EDIT :

It looks to me (but maybe i am wrong) that :
No vibration from the wheels(Gives information on the type of road and together with rotation speed tells you what happens to you).
No rotation feedback from the wheels while comparing with a gyroscope or an acceleration sensor(Keeps you from getting more stuck).
No feedback from the shock absorbers(Gives you additional information from the ground you are driving on).
No ultrasonic to determine if the road in front of you is really empty or that the road does not stop or has a large hole. Ultrasonic together with that laser would really help as verification.

That would give a lot of help. An idea is to teach the robot car what kind of roads as some extreme cases and use that as constants. Everything in between those constants can be used to let the robot autonomous speed up, speed down or even backup and take another road depending on driving conditions.

I do have the utmost respect for these people though...