Hi dude,
Not sure, but this may be a site based on being stuck in N5. Some of the members are definitely stuck in N5. The information is likely to be accurate but incomplete; such as taking into account Bayesian theory when addressing a diagnosis but not taking into account the equally important facts that both you and your doctor are human, have emotions, have an imagination, get hangovers, get anxious, get spam from drug companies, have bad days and good days and so on...quantitative info is not much use without its qualitative counterpart.

...If you find a site for people stuck in N3 and put the two together, that could work well for a healthy balance.

One of the main reasons we started this site (this one where you are here and now) was because we couldn't find any well balanced sites on the mind and brain already online.

If that changes, you dudes will be the first to know  :  )
Best,
AR

Hi dude,

If you get into anthropology, you'll find there are/have been a selection of societies based on 'stuck' matrices. It's absolutely fascinating, because over time they have on the whole moved up the networks, although each contains subsets of smaller groups stuck in other matrices.

I can see why the idea of finding 6 sites all in based on different stuck positions and getting something coherent when one puts them together may sound like a workable strategy, but it isn't. If you think about it, being stuck means wronguse, so effectively you would be combining information from six different types of wronguse!  :  )  As you succinctly put it, “Being stuck is being stuck”.

If you can find quality specialist sites with an open minded balanced approach (for example, The Erowid Vaults for pharmacology or PlosOne for biology), and put them together, than you have a great database of reliable info.

I've always admired Leonardo's approach, but I didn't know the dude...for all we know he could have had a dreadful emotional life, recurrent depression and an addiction to paint sniffing  :  )  I see 'genius moments' from many individuals in many fields but have yet to meet anyone with fully realized potential. That's very exciting, because it implies there may be no limit to human improvement over time.
Best,
AR

MM800 wrote:
do you ACTUALLY have minimum parameters defined, able to measure, point & say: "THERE!"  ?

Hi dude,
I believe both maximum and minimum parameters are impossible to define. Some would claim plants to be intelligent, and some even go so far as claiming intelligence for atoms.

Minimum parameters for humans are defined 'officially' by the medical establishments the moment we are born -did we pass the AGPAR scale? Are all of our bits there? Is there any brain damage? And so on. Minimum parameters are arbitrary though, because of the known plasticity and amazing capacity for self repair or rerouting of the brain (for example after stroke, or the astonishing apparently normal development of some born with only half a brain).

It may be possible to define 'inability to fully develop' as a probability against time (for example if someone has only two networks functional and is ninety-seven and has just been told they have ten minutes to live, it's unlikely that they'll develop their full potential.) That's an extreme joke example of something that could at some point theoretically be measured for each of us but even so, I'm not convinced that the object of the intelligence-development game is to 'win' (eg, achieve maximum potential) so much as the object of the game is in fact to stay in the game  :  )  In short, I'd vote for the 'work of art' motive.
Best,
AR

MM800 Wrote:
if we loosely attain ourselves to brains containing all "modules" we should be able to do better than simply say "people totally sucks at some given skillZz"...

I think main advantage of knowing, “I suck at this or that particular skill” is that newbies can use this information to help themselves find out more without having to learn a load of science first; eg, because I suck at particular skills, I am able to find out very quickly which of my networks are not fully online, which transmitters may be lacking, and which exercises I should do to improve them.

Without the 'skills' approach, it's more difficult to relate structure to function without learning some biology/physiology/neurochemistry and that can put people off when they're just starting out.

It's pretty much the same as assessing someone after a stroke etc by looking at what skills have been lost and what haven't.

If you work with percentage scores on networks there are height limits (I don't mean short people are not allowed to take part)  :  )  But I remain unconvinced that the term 'genius' really means anything, apart from being an earlier form of 'genie' (should that be 'djinni'?) So I vote we ignore it completely and aim for whatever our own personal definitions of excellence may be.
Best,
AR

MM800 Wrote:
have you more data on transmitters? Specially regarding your association of "right/left acetylcholine/norepinephrine"..


Firstly the map is not the territory; we can't apply the left/right mapping system to structure & function literally because although neuronal cell bodies tend to huddle together, they are nowhere near most of their own axons, they don't indicate where their own axons go (it'd be really cool if they were color coded!) and all the interaction happens between synapses.

The model we use is just to show up the patterns of relationships/associations between things, like the standard model in particle physics where listing all the forces on one side is not implying that they all exist only on one side of spacetime...(actually that could be really bizarre, as universes go...)

Plus, most functions/abilities need multiple networks and often opposite sides of the brain do two parts of the same processing task.

The emphasis on location is only important in the context of the inner model, as a reference database for imagination, memory etc. processes.

Secondly, all that is needed is inhibitory/excitatory interactions. That's what we're trying to explain in the tutorials; there is no need for anything any more complicated to go on in order to enable abstract functions with concrete processes. By themselves, zeros and ones can give rise to all the variety of complex behaviors.

In concrete functions we've got a process interacting with concrete materials (the body) to achieve concrete effects (behaviors; motions in space). In abstract functions we've got exactly the same process interacting with “things that represent things” ie, abstract ideas; procedures in the mind. If you know that N2 helps you focus your eyeballs, you can guarantee than N4 helps you focus your attention. Hardware becomes software when code is given meaning. “Hand, grasp the object” becomes “mind, grasp the concept.” The mind is running the process on abstract thoughts instead of on the concrete body (sometimes, both at once).

It's difficult to explain this in short form and it's going into several tutorials, so I'll stop here.

Maybe useful bits:
The interaction of ACh and NE was filled in a little more in 1988:
http://jpet.aspetjournals.org/content/244/3/879

This paper is accessible and looks at ACh's role in focus (they call it 'focused attention'):
Science 12 August 2011: Vol. 333 no. 6044 pp. 888-891
https://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6044/888
(I'm using https and link won't work without it)

Most available articles about norepinephrine focuses on its role in excess in risk-taking/manic  behavior or its depletion in depression, such as here:
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_08/ … r_dep.html
(rather old fashioned but still relevant) where they get as far as “establishing positive feelings” and “might also help to inhibit the negative emotions “ but don't make the connection to self esteem, and there is some work on its role in cognition in the context of problems here:
http://brainmind.com/Depression.html

Best
AR
PS Wikipedia is a bit crap but some of the links it gives to (external) neuro stuff are a lot more  useful.

MM800: I'm gonna answer this in bits, 'cos there are several different issues here that deserve their own space.

MM800 Wrote:
That's interesting because most members of the general population -- who think they know something about the brain -- will talk about "right/left brained people", in fact that is probably the only thing they "know".


...Well that and “we only use 10% of our brain” and “emotions come from the heart”  LOL  :  ) But that's nothing on the BS scale when we consider that many people still believe a giant man in the sky created everything by magic.

Most people interpreted r/l brain function not as doing different parts of the same task, but of doing different tasks, i.e., complete specialization. The left side dealt with language, and the right side simply didn't.

I guess it's sort of intuitive, like people used to believe different lobes did different things. Most people are aware that they have emotional thoughts and intellectual thoughts, and when the brain was first examined it quite clearly had symmetrical sides, so the one was attributed to the other. It's revealing that nobody theorized a front/back functional symmetry for reason/emotion* even though that makes more sense, but there's no reflective symmetry between front and rear brain halves.

Also, back in right/left brain days, a lot was known about the left hemisphere in relation to function, but not much was known about the right. For example the language areas on the left  (grammar, syntax, logical meaning) were very well known, but the language areas on the right (metaphor, symbolism, analogical meaning) were only found during the last few years.
More later,
AR

*There was of course MacLean's 'Triune Brain' hypothesis, which came close but still got it wrong.

(third bit)
MM800 Wrote:
The breakdown of networks/matrices here to their respective neurotransmitters give the impression that if I inject ACh I will get more creative while if I pump up my NE, I would get "brainy" =)


If you inject ACh straight into certain parts of the RtPFC you will have an orgasm for ages, so don't do this unless you go to those sorts of parties.

Inserted into other areas of N4, it could indeed improve your creativity to some extent, which is why smokers fill ashtrays when programming or doing other creative tasks (nicotinic acid receptors/increase of ACh). What a transmitter does in a given location also depends on multiple variables. Consider the example experiment with NE in the NHA Library article “Emotion & sentiment -The Basics”. Exactly the same transmitter input was given, but circumstances dictated what people experienced AND their resulting chemistry. This is a great advert for input control  :  )
Best,
AR