A Reader Asks: “Tell Me More About Rodolfo LLinás”
Rodolfo R. Llinás, born in 1934, and a research professor in neuroscience at New York University, plays a central role in the organization of ideas presented in this Substack newsletter, as shown in an earlier post:
He joins a list of authors that made readers curious for more details, including James P. Carse, and John Boyd. These authors connect many dots across our conceptual landscape because their work moves us past old theories, and articulates practical alternatives.
Cognition as an Empirical Question
The book titled “i of the Vortex” as well as Llinás’ entry in “The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography” recap a lifetime of research that provides:
- “… a contextual continuum of analysis from the molecular to the psycho/physical level.”
This continuum of analysis over a lifetime articulates Llinás’ fundamental contribution, and productive alternative to old theories:
- “… the issue of cognition is first and foremost an empirical problem, not a philosophical one.”
His empirical results, documented in the sources below, provide a user-manual for the human brain.
Source: Llinás, Rodolfo R. (2001), i of the Vortex, From Neurons to Self, A Bradford Book, MIT Press
Source: Squire, Larry R. [editor] (2006), The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography, Volume 5, pp 413-452, Elsevier
Live Not by Blank Slates
Llinás’ theory moves us past philosophical views of cognition such as:
- the blank slate (tabula rasa) theory of a learning brain that bootstraps from experience,
… and replaces them with an empirical view of cognition:
- a full slate (sensory/motor) theory of a brain that emulates reality, and comes complete with ancestral pre-sets.
o “… we are born with a well-wired brain and an incredible amount of knowledge derived from the [evolutionary] genetic wiring of our brains.”
o “… people never learn so much that their neurology becomes fundamentally different from that of a completely uneducated person.”
o “Genetic memory (long-term in species terms) is present at birth, as memory that occurs in the absence of sensory experience.”
His work starts with individual neurons, tracing their evolutionary changes into functional architectures that guide movement with predictions:
- “Underlying the workings of perception is prediction, that is, the useful expectation of events yet to come. Prediction … is the very core of brain function.”
- “Indeed, prediction begins at the single neuron level”
- “… prediction is the ultimate and most pervasive of all brain functions, …”
The physics that starts the prediction process at the neuron level comes from fast/slow differences between individual nerve cells building-up to a theory that sees:
- the brain as the result of an evolutionary development focused on the management of motion through prediction, and
- the mind as a self-referential, closed-system emulator of reality with built-in, ancestral pre-sets.
o “… thinking is the evolutionary internalization of movement.”
This leads to his description of the functional architecture of a brain, focused on the management of movement, modulated by sensory inputs, leading to the emergence of the self, and eventually its ability to communicate with others, as summarized on the chart below:
- The four steps of Llinás’ functional architecture, shown in bold in the first row, and ranging from:
o Perceptions of stimuli, to
o Amplification of perceptions, to
o Goal-oriented predictions, and finally to
o Guided movements.
- Key features of the brain across these four functional steps, shown in normal font in the second row, highlighting:
o the discontinuous nature of perceptions,
o The need of context for amplification,
o the short-lived, fast transient, timeframe of predictions, and
o the modularity of movement control in the form of fixed action patterns (FAPs).
- The matching features of the mind, shown in normal font on the third row, including:
o The ancestral pre-sets based on universals (the invariant properties of life’s task environment, such as light waves and the development of eyes) developed in evolutionary time through variability and selection (survival significance),
o the role of individual emotion to create context for the specific organism,
o the role of intention based on prediction, and
o the expression of controlled behavior.
From Cells, to Brains
The evolution from single-cell specialization (eukaryotic organisms) to multi-celled organisms took a long time, perhaps as long as 2 billion years. In contrast, it may have taken a third of that time, since then, to create the rest of life as we know it:
- “… before certain specializations, cell aggregations simply did not provide any survival advantage…”
This evolution took a very long time, and for good reasons because such aggregations:
- “… represent the forfeiture of a very important principle: the ability (and purpose) to a single cell to maintain and protect if own life.”
It is from such aggregations of single cells that eventually:
- “Neurons arose within the space between sensing and moving”
- “This space mushroomed to become the brain.”
Specifically:
- “… the basic functional unity for the neuron is electrical, with electrotonic interactions and action potentials serving as the temporal binding element giving the neuron is integrative backbone.”,
- “Chemical and electrical synaptic transmission are, on the other hand, the basic coinage that binds the different cellular elements into single multicellular functions states.”
These origins show that the functions of the brain work as a closed-system, most of the time:
- “This … mass of neurons operates as a closed-system to perform sensory-motor transformations.”
Using one and a half pound of organic material, housing 10 billion cells, and consuming 14 watts of power:
- “… we are basically dreaming machines that construct virtual models of the real world”
- “… reality is elaborated by brain function…”
From Brains to Minds
Pre-motor predictions must be centralized, the self is the centralization of prediction:
- “How do we take in fractionalized properties of the external world and put them in the context of a single whole?”
Adding centralized control to manage motion creates “mindness”, consciousness comes from the centralization of predictions:
- “… this mindness state, which may or may not represent external reality (the latter as with imagining or dreaming), has evolved as a goal-oriented device that implements predictive/intentional interactions between a living organism and its environment.”
The conceptual unity of the self, “cognitive binding”, exists before self-awareness:
- “Mapping connectedness in the time domain, superimposed on top of the limited possibilities of spatial connectedness…”
- “This temporally coherent event that binds, in the time domain, the fractured components of external and internal reality into a single construct is what we call the “self.”
The “I” of the “i of the Vortex” is not a tangible thing, but it exists as a transiently, and continuously calculated, summary representation of a complex and heterogeneous internal world:
- “It is just a particular mental state, a generated abstract entity we refer to as “I” or “self”.”
- “It exists inside the closed system of the central nervous system as an attractor, a vortex without true existence other than as the common impetus of otherwise unrelated parts.”
- “… the loom that weaves the relation of the organism to its internal representation of the external world.”
- “As human beings, we differ from one another in the extent to which we pay attention to the external vs. internal world.”
Thinking is the evolutionary internalization of movement, the embedding of universals through motricity, thus the philosophical discussions about the reality of perceptions and their overlap with reality have little practical importance:
- “All that is required is that the predictive properties of the computational states generated by the brain meet the requirements for successful interactions with the external world.”
Finally, living while thinking requires the addition of functional efficiencies to limit the degrees of freedom, and matching computational overload, in an over-complete system:
- “So now we have a wondrous biological “machine” that is intrinsically capable of the global oscillatory patterns that literally are our thoughts, perceptions, dreams, the self, and self-awareness.”
- “The self, the center of prediction, cannot however orchestrate every feat the body must accomplish from moment to moment…”
- “Fixed Action Patterns (FAPs) are sets of well-defined motor patterns, ready-made “motor tapes”…”
- “FAPs are subject to modification; they can be learned, remembered, and perfected.”
From Minds to Societies
What evolutionary advantage comes from subjectivity (experiencing something rather than just doing it)?
- “If FAPS represent modules of fleeting but well-defined function within the motor domain, used and forgotten as needed, consciousness represents a similar module of function, but one of “focus”, also fleeting, utilized within the context of the moment an discarded.”
Emotions are pre-motor FAPs that express the self, giving context to amplify perceptions leading to motor behavior controlled by the self:
- “One would not be surprised if emotional states were to be simple stereotypical responses; the cardinal entities (in particular the sins) may be triggered by peptide modulators to the point that the universal characterization may be recognized by most human cultures.”
- “… emotional states are events that do not exist in the outside world; they are purely internal events and would remain completely hidden to us (as observers of others) were it not for motricity.”
- “Precisely which emotion may be occurring is inferred only through the expression of the FAP that is liberated by that given emotion.”
The functional geometry of the brain is an image of reality, a simplification of reality, and a very useful one for the management of motion:
o “[The brain] makes representations of aspects of the external world, fractionalized aspects, by making a useful geometry, a geometry with internal meaning that has nothing to do with the “geometry” of the external world that gave rise to it,.”
o “This is the vector/vector transformational capability of the brain that is independent of the coordinate systems utilized to measure it.”
o “The brain is a set of coordinate systems that measure or recognize abstract geometries that do not exist in the external world.”
FAPs, emotions, and consciousness provide a survival advantage because they simplify of an overcomplete system [more coordinate vectors than needed for a complete system], enabling the distinction between the strategic and the tactical in the performance of movements.
- “Strategy is the reduction of choice, the quick entrance into the right ballpark… One strategy will always supplant the other; the system is organized to prioritize momentary emotional states, choose one as the most important, and then act on it.”
- “[Consciousness of particular emotional states] is necessary because it underlies our ability to choose.”
Finally, it enables communications with others, using language as a pre-motor FAP to extend one’s range of perceptions, predictions, and actions:
o “Language is an eye, but an abstract one, an internal abstraction,”
o “[the eye and language] are specialized apparatuses for the geometrical internalization of external fractionalized properties.”
o “The face is transforming all the incoming information into one coherent event. Because operating from a single event is always easier, it is far more powerful than continuously having to take into consideration an ever-changing set of variables with an ever-changing point of governance. This is why there is but one seat of prediction, and thus consciousness.”
o “[prosody and language] are representations of the internal abstractions such as emotions and intentions.”
o “… [language, like prosody, is] an abstraction coupled with a motor expression that conveys to another animal what its internal state is like at the moment.”
Practical Wonders
What practical considerations can we derive from this work of wonders that, as shown on the chart below, connects Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and the Humanities?
First, and in the vein that Llinás’ work gives us a user-manual for the brain, it provides us with a new understanding of the meaning of practicality.
For humans whose brains manage movement through prediction in a four-dimensional world (3-D + time), this work shows that practicality is:
- a predictive statement (about expected outcomes),
- embodied at a specific scale, shown in bold red font on the chart below, the human scale of movement.
In this context, it becomes clear why statements made at different scales of knowledge, as shown in bold black font on the chart below and from the cosmological to the quantum level, seem to lack practicality:
- They predict movements at much larger or at much smaller scales, they do not move things at the human scale.
Being practical means finding understandable conversion factors from the very large, or the very small scales back to the human scale.
Second, the fullness of our shared humanity become clear when we see the nature of our minds as closed-systems filled-up with evolutionary, ancestral pre-sets that are modulated but not changed by the sensory inputs of a lifetime. We have more in common than separates us.
- “The range limits of learning, in physiological sense, help define and dictate our commonality.”
Third, the evolution of fixed action patterns (FAPs), and the fixed range of control that we can exert over them set limits on our ability to change our behavior and the behavior of others. These limits create explicit boundaries for the effectiveness of marketing, branding, and nudging.
- “[Humans] are really quite limited to what we already know (are phylogenetically prewired to express) and the range of adaptability of a particular function.”
- “… the ability, the prewired circuitry, is provided phylogenetically, and is [only] honed through ontology.”
Fourth, this work provides deep conceptual anchors for proven practices such as John Boyd’s OODA loop.
As you can see on the first chart in this post, Llinás’ conceptual architecture maps directly with Boyd’s loop:
- Perceptions of stimuli = Observe
- Amplification of perceptions = Orient
- Goal-oriented predictions = Decide
- Guided movements = Act
Llinás’ work connects directly with other authors to anchor their work from the world Humanities into the worlds of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, including:
- James Carse’ “Finite and Infinite Games”
o What we deem significant, which can only be determined from the perspective of the seat of prediction, the self, and what the self has experienced and juxtaposed over a single lifetime, are not what natural selection considers noteworthy or preservable.”
o “… although these events clearly highlight our lives, indeed are our lives, they mean very little to biological evolution, for they are too variable, too case-specific at the individual level, and have little to no impact on the species as a whole.”
Future posts will highlight such connections with other authors and their ideas, including Hannah Arendt’s “Two-in-One Mind”, and Gerd Gigerenzer’s “Heuristics”.
Fifth, this work shows the practical constraints that could lead to computers having human-like consciousness: They need to manage motion at the human scale.
What other practical lessons do you see flowing from this user-manual for our brains?
“CTRI by Francois Gadenne” connects the dots of life-enhancing practices for the next generation, free of controlling algorithms, based on the lifetime experience of a retirement age entrepreneur, and as the co-founder of CTRI continuously updated with insights from Wealth, Health, and Statistics research performed on behalf of large companies.