[vinnomot] Humanism and Psychology: (Comp 6): Human Brain Infornation Processing

 

Understanding Ourselves and Our Universe: How Psychology Can Turn the "Mysteries of Human Nature" into Useful Tools for Self Improvement and Success in Life

 

Part 6: A Quick Overview of Human Information Processing

Information processing (IP) is "psychology talk" for the way humans take in, interpret, understand, think about, and make and implement decisions in response to stimuli from our environments….. The natural laws and principles of learning and BeMod just completed in the previous discussion (which derived directly from the excellent behaviorism research, theories, and practical applications of the great psychologists John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner). Now we conclude with the "bio" and "information processing" parts of the model, in reverse. Before we start this ldiscussion, we're quickly going into human neuropsychology (or psychoneurology. We will be constantly referring to neurons and neural functions (and neural dysfunctions). At this point in our Cornerstone study, one only needs to know three simple things in order to keep up with the discussion: 1.  A neuron is a nerve cell. 2.  What a neuron does is to "fire";(or suddenly release a current) i.e., when stimulated on its receiving end (the dendrites), a nerve cell will conduct an electrical charge down its length and pass it on from its transmitting end (the axon), usually to another neuron, or to a muscle, organ, or gland. Humans have one or two hundred billion neurons in their brains, performing a myriad of different tasks, but in every case, all that's required for any neuron to function properly is for it to "fire" properly. 3.  Although structurally the neuron is the basic structural unit from which all human nervous systems are constructed, functionally; the unit is neural circuit, which is a group of two or three to tens of thousands of neurons acting together to produce some psychological or neural phenomenon. For now, our basic theorem is that neurons don't think (or feel, or behave), but neural circuits do think, feel, behave, remember, see, plan, and more. Thus, a neural circuit is the basic unit of information processing; one circuit = one information bit. (This is actually result of human adaptation, because we have nearly  one or two hundred billion neurons in our brains, but those neurons can organize into several quadrillion neural circuits. Thus, we can be much more adaptive and intelligent using the larger capacity provided by neural circuits than we could with neurons acting alone.) By learning such aspects of our brain physiology and biochemistry, one can gain a better understanding of psychology. Information processing (IP) is "psychology talk" for the way humans take in, interpret, understand, think about, and make and implement decisions in response to  stimuli from our environments (including stimuli from the external world, from the parts of our bodies other than the CNS, and even when one part of the CNS communicates with another part of the CNS), and how we think, feel, and act about it. In non-human animals, we generally talk about them "reacting to stimuli." In humans we call the same basic phenomena information processing because humans and the higher mammals translate stimuli into more meaningful cognitive symbols (information bits) and modify, manipulate, and mediate those symbols in so many different complex ways (processing) that it just intuitively seems to deserve a more impressive term. Of course, there's probably some "speciesism" (favoring our type of animal above others for its own sake) going on there, too! But it's also a good descriptive term, so let's see what it's all about. Step 1: Stimulus -> Sensory Reception = Energy Transduction. Sensory stimuli (energy sources, such as light for vision, sound waves for hearing, mechanical energy for touch, chemical molecules in the air for smell, etc.) impinge on sensory receptors in human sensory organs (such as the retina in the eye, cochlea in the ear, olfactory epithelium in the nose, etc.), setting off electrochemical sensory codes for transmission to higher neural centers, primarily in the brain. Remember how the almost infinitely complex DNA code is made up of only 4 "letters" (A, G, C, T)? Well, neural codes from the sensory receptors are similarly made up of variations in the quantity, frequency, and pattern of neurons activated by the stimulus. Once the sensory receptor neurons "fire" in response to sensory stimuli reception, energy transduction has occurred (by the sensory neurons changing the external energy form into electrochemical energy in the nervous system), but there's no "sensory experience" yet; i.e., you haven't seen or heard or smelled anything. That's still two steps and a few milliseconds away, even for our fastest senses (and compared to many non-human animals, most of our sensory transmissions mechanisms just aren't very fast). Step 2: Sensory Transmission. Once the sensory receptor neuron transduces the stimulus energy into neurochemical energy and fires, the resulting neural code is sent up the sensory fibers (a series of ascending/afferent neurons bundled into nerve fibers) to the specialized reception areas for each sense in the brain. Sensory transmission's sole function is to transport the neural code from the sensory receptor neurons to the brain, without changing the code in any way (transmission). (Some senses have intermediate, sub-cortical areas that begin processing the codes before reaching the brain.) Step 3: Cognition. Also called "higher processing," this step covers three kinds of functioning: sensation and perception, cognitive and emotional mediation, and decision-making. Cognition is the most complex and "human" IP (Information processing) step of all. This is where all the perceiving, thinking, remembering, feeling, analyzing, evaluating, deciding, and planning occur. A. Sensation/Perception: Once the sensory transmission code reaches specialized sensory reception areas of the brain, specialized neural circuits fire, constituting sensation (only "meaningless sensory experience"; i.e., one may "sense" vaguely that a sound or smell has occurred, but with no idea of what it is yet). Sensory reception area neurons in turn fire circuits of neurons in nearby sensory association areas and memory circuits, which become biochemically associated with the sensory code and give that sensation meaning (perception). For the first time, you can "image" a sight or sound in your brain, and recognize what it is or what it means. B. Cognition and Emotion: Once that sensory information has been translated into associative circuits outside the specialized reception areas of the brain, they can simultaneously fire (associate) thousands of other circuits holding other memories and even instincts. Now, for the first time, you can think about what has been sensed and perceived, hold an idea of what that sensory information means to you (a simple form of cognition). You can also conceptualize about the relationships among that sensory stimulus and other similar stimuli and thoughts and behaviors, and "remember" what response options you have and how you feel about those options (higher forms of cognition called mediation -- connecting stimulus phenomena to associated stimulus, cognitive, emotional, and/or response phenomena), and start formulating a range of possible response options. C. Decision-Making: Once your memory circuits have provided you with the necessary information to determine which, of all the responses you've made before, have been the most reinforced, and are thus the most adaptive for this particular stimulus situation, you can decide (choose from those options) how to respond and form intentions and plans for what behaviors will make up your actual response, which are again formed into neural codes by the specialized motor (movement) areas of the brain. Step 4: Motor Transmission. From the specialized motor areas of the brain, motor neurons send response codes down motor transmission neurons (descending/efferent nerve fibers), once again transporting the response codes unchanged, to the only parts of the human body that can actually "behave" (muscles, organs, and glands). Step 5: Response/Behavior. Neurons between the motor transmission fibers and our muscles, organs, and/or glands transduce the electrochemical energy in our nervous system back into mechanical energy, and stimulate whatever pattern of responses our motor codes command (muscles contract to create movement, and/or organs activate and do whatever those particular organs are preprogrammed to do, and/or glands secrete their fluids). Thus every single "bit" of information (where a bit = the basic unit of information; the lowest reducible unit of sensation, perception, cognition, emotion, behavior, etc.) is processed through the human nervous system as is summarized above. (By the way, the same five-step sequence also holds for the simplest stimulus-response processing sequence, such as when you stub your toe and yell and jump back, but that is just instinctive reflex without any cognition involved. That simplest sequence is called the "reflex arc," and is mediated by the spinal chord, not the brain.) We'll concentrate on human information processing from here on in this serie, and share more details of just how human CNS biochemistry affects psychological phenomena.

 

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