FermatsLastRolo — LessWrong

LESSWRONG
LW

Seems to me (but I am not an expert) that most of the brain functionality is not like this. Especially the parts related to thinking. Thinking is usually slow and needs to be learned -- which is the exact opposite of how the massively parallelized parts work.

I'm not an expert either, but from what I've read on the subject, most of the neocortex does work like this. The architecture used in the visual cortex is largely the same as that used in the rest of the cortex, with some minor variations. This is suggested by the fact that people who lose an area of their neocortex are often able to recover, with another area filling in for it. I'm on a phone, so I can't go into as much detail as I'd like, but I recommend investigating the work of Mountcastle, and more recently Markram.

Edit: On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins explains this principle in more depth, it's an interesting read.

Replying toVisual Mental Imagery Training

FermatsLastRolo13y

Visual Mental Imagery Training

I would honestly be very surprised if you actually kept track of every visual detail verbally.

Sorry, I didn't really explain this very well - I'm not tracking them verbally. In fact, most of the time I don't tend to represent my thoughts verbally either (something else that seems to surprise people when we discuss how we think), they exist in the same state that my spacial representations of things do - at least until I need them in a verbal form (such as when I'm trying to decide on the wording of something I'm going to say or write). It's hard for me to describe the state my thoughts take to someone... (read more)

Replying toVisual Mental Imagery Training

FermatsLastRolo13y

Visual Mental Imagery Training

I also struggle to create mental imagery. In this scenario, I do imagine a scene, but it's not generally composed of imagery. I'm aware that this probably won't make sense to someone who has a primarily visual imagination, but when I'm imagining a scene like this, it's more like a network of facts in my head - I piece together the underlying concepts behind what's being described, rather than a visual representation of them.

For example, if I'm imagining a room full of people, I'll have a mental model of everyone's positions in the room, which I'll then update if the story mentions that someone is stood at the left of the... (read more)