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  1. <html>
  2. <head>
  3. <title>
  4. Intuitive knowledge and its development
  5. </title>
  6. </head>
  7. <body>
  8. <h1>
  9. Intuitive knowledge and its development
  10. </h1>
  11. <p></p>
  12. <p>
  13. <strong>Understanding consciousness is necessary for understanding life. Variations of consciousness, such
  14. as dementia, depression, delusion, or insight, originality, curiosity have to be understood
  15. biologically.
  16. </strong>
  17. <strong> </strong>
  18. </p>
  19. <p>
  20. To understand our ability to know and discover, I think it's valuable to consider foolishness along with
  21. wisdom, since "knowledge" consists of both. Scientists have been notorious for opposing new discoveries, but
  22. the mental rigidity of old age is so general, and well known, that many people have believed that it was
  23. caused by the death of brain cells. Individual cells do tend to become less adaptive with aging, and
  24. metabolism generally slows down with aging, but even relatively young and mentally quick people are
  25. susceptible to losing their ability to understand new ideas.
  26. </p>
  27. <p>
  28. I think our use of language is both the means by which understanding can be preserved, encapsulated, and
  29. disseminated, and a great impediment to understanding. At first, words are continuous with the intuitive
  30. framework in which they are learned, but they gradually become relatively independent and abstract. Things
  31. can be learned without directly experiencing them. Even though words gradually change through use, the
  32. simple fact that they have a degree of dependability allows them to function even when there is no active
  33. thought. Uncritical listening is possible, and if a person can say something, it seems to be easy to believe
  34. that it's true. By the age of 25, our language has usually given us many assumptions about the nature of the
  35. world.
  36. </p>
  37. <p>
  38. Verbal formulations of one sort are given up for new verbal formulations, in the process called education.
  39. Sometimes graduate students seem to have lost all common sense. It's as if their hard-drive had been
  40. reformatted to allow their professors to download onto it. But common sense, usually, is just what Einstein
  41. called it, an accumulation of prejudices.
  42. </p>
  43. <p>
  44. Children learn language so easily that many people have seriously believed that a certain language was
  45. inherited by people of each ethnic group. Bilingual people were thought to be intellectually inferior
  46. (though it turned out that bilingualism actually increases a person's mental abilities--possibly because of
  47. the brain development known to be produced by learning1.) Eventually, people learned that the children of
  48. immigrants were as capable of learning the language of the new country as the native children were.
  49. </p>
  50. <p>
  51. Then, explaining the mystery of language learning took a new form, that didn't seem foolish to most
  52. professional anthropologists and linguists. The first and most important step in the new theory was to
  53. declare that simple learning theory was inadequate to explain the development of language. Language
  54. developed, just as the silly racial theory had thought, out of our genetic endowment, except that what we
  55. inherited was now said to be a Universal Language, with its Universal Rules embedded in our chromosomes.
  56. Then, the speed with which children learn language was to be explained as the "innateness" of all of the
  57. complex stuff of language, with only a few things needing to be actually learned--those minor details that
  58. distinguish English from Eskimo or Zapotec.
  59. </p>
  60. <p>
  61. Although the phrase "genetic epistemology" was coined by Jean Piaget, a major philosophical and scientific
  62. theme of the 20th century has been the idea that the "forms" of knowledge, for perceiving space, or logical
  63. relations, or language patterns, are derived from our genes, and that they are somehow built into the
  64. arrangement of our brain cells so that we spontaneously think in certain ways, and don't have the capacity
  65. to transcend the nature of our inherited brain. In that view, children have their own pre-logical way of
  66. thinking, and their thought (and language development) must proceed through certain stages, each governed by
  67. some "structural" process in the nervous system. The only thing wrong with the idea of innate knowledge is
  68. that people use it to tell us what we can't know, in other words, to rationalize stupidity. Of course, they
  69. wouldn't like to phrase it that way, because they consider their "genetic epistemology of symbolic forms" to
  70. be the essence and the totality of intelligence, and that people who allow their thoughts to be structured
  71. entirely by experience are just confused.
  72. </p>
  73. <p>
  74. Years ago, I had been criticizing Noam Chomsky's theory of language so much, that I thought I might have
  75. misjudged or inappropriately depreciated his general attitude toward consciousness, so I asked him some
  76. questions about the intelligence of animals. His response confirmed my view that he subscribed to the most
  77. extreme form of "genetic epistemology":
  78. </p>
  79. <p>
  80. "I don't know whether there is a common animal ability to manipulate images and generalize. In fact, I doubt
  81. it very much. Thus the kind of "generalization" that leads to knowledge of lanugage from sensory experience
  82. seems to me to involve principles such as those of universal grammar as an innate property, for reasons I
  83. have explained elsewhere, and I see no reason to believe that these principles underlie generalization in
  84. other animals. Nor do I think that the kinds of generalization that lead a bird to gain knowledge of how to
  85. build a nest, or to sing its song, or to orient itself spatially, are necessarily part of the human ability
  86. to generalize."
  87. </p>
  88. <p>
  89. All of the textbooks that I have seen that discuss the issue of animal intelligence have taken a position
  90. like that of Chomsky--that any knowledge animals have is either rigidly instinctual, or else is just a set
  91. of movements that have been mechanically learned. In other words, there isn't anything intelligent about the
  92. complex things that animals may do. Konrad Lorenz and the ethologists explained animal behavior in terms of
  93. chains of reflexes that are "triggered" by certain sensations or perceptions. This claim that animals'
  94. behavior just consists of mechanical chains of reflexes strictly follows Descartes' doctrine, and Chomsky
  95. has consistently acknowledged that his theory is Cartesian. The claim that children have their own
  96. non-logical way of understanding things is very similar to the doctrine about animals, in the way it limits
  97. real rational understanding to adult human beings.
  98. </p>
  99. <p>
  100. The awareness of young animals is particularly impressive to me, because we know the short time they have
  101. had in which to learn about the world. Any instance in which a young animal understands a completely novel
  102. situation, in a way that is fully adequate and workable, demonstrates that it is capable of intellectual
  103. generalization.
  104. </p>
  105. <p>
  106. Beyond that, I think animal inventiveness can teach us about our own capacity for inventiveness, which both
  107. the genetic and the behaviorist theories of knowledge totally fail to explain.
  108. </p>
  109. <p>
  110. Spiders that build architecturally beautiful webs have been favorite subjects for theorizing about the
  111. instinctive mechanisms of behavior. When spiders were sent up on an orbiting satellite, they were in a
  112. situation that spiders had never experienced before. Spiders have always taken advantage of gravity for
  113. building their webs, and at first, the orbiting spiders made strange little muddled arrangements of
  114. filaments, but after just a few attempts, they were able to build exactly the same sort of elegant
  115. structures that spiders normally build. (My interpretation of that was that spiders may be more intelligent
  116. than most neurobiologists.)
  117. </p>
  118. <p>
  119. Nesting birds often swoop at people or animals who get too close to their nest. Early last summer, I had
  120. noticed some blue jays that seemed to be acting defensive whenever I went into one part of the yard. On a
  121. very hot day at the end of summer, a couple of plump jays were squawking and apparently trying to get my
  122. attention while I was watering the front yard, and I idly wondered why they would be acting that way so late
  123. in the year. I had gone around the house to water things in the back yard, and the birds came over the
  124. house, and were still squawking, and trying to get my attention. I realized that their excitement didn't
  125. have anything to do with their nest, and looking more carefully, I saw that they were young birds. As it
  126. dawned on me that they were interested in the water squirting out of the hose, I aimed the stream up towards
  127. them, and they got as close to it as they could. Since the force of the stream might have hurt them, I put
  128. on a nozzle that made a finer spray, and the birds immediately came down to the lowest tip of the branch,
  129. where they could get the full force of the mist, holding out their wings, and leaning into the spray so that
  130. it ruffled their breast feathers. Their persistence had finally paid off when they got me to understand what
  131. they wanted, and they were enjoying the cool water. As new young birds, I don't know how they understood
  132. hoses and squirting water, but it was clear that they recognized me as a potentially intelligent being with
  133. whom they could communicate.
  134. </p>
  135. <p>
  136. For a person, that wouldn't have seemed like a tremendously inventive response to the hot weather, but for
  137. young birds that hadn't been out of the nest for long, it made it clear to me that there is more inventive
  138. intelligence in the world than is apparent to most academic psychologists and ethologists.
  139. </p>
  140. <p>
  141. Early porpoise researchers were surprised when a porpoise understood a sequence in which one tone was
  142. followed by two, and then by three, and answered by producing a series of four tones. The porpoise had
  143. discovered that people knew how to count.
  144. </p>
  145. <p>
  146. Experiments with bees show the same sort of understanding of numbers and intentions. An experimenter set out
  147. dishes of honey in a sequence, doubling the distance each time. After the first three dishes had been found
  148. by scouts, the bees showed up at the fourth location before the honey arrived, extrapolating from the
  149. experimenter's previous behavior and inferring his intentions.
  150. </p>
  151. <p>
  152. Once I noticed that an ant seemed to be dozing at the base of every maple leaf, and that there were several
  153. aphids on each leaf. I was getting very close, trying to understand why the ant was sitting so quietly.
  154. Apparently my odor gave the ant a start, and he leaped into activity, racing up the leaf, and giving each
  155. aphid a tap as he passed. When he had reached the end of the leaf and had touched every aphid, his agitation
  156. suddenly disappeared, and he returned to his spot at the base of the leaf. Although I knew that ants could
  157. count very well, as demonstrated by experiments in which an ant had to describe a complex route to a dish of
  158. honey, it was the apparent emotion that interested me. It reminded me of the hostess who counted her dishes
  159. before the guests left.
  160. </p>
  161. <p>
  162. When the brains of such different kinds of animal work in such similar ways, in situations that contain many
  163. new components, I don't think it's possible to conclude anything except that intelligence is a common
  164. property of animals, and that it comprises "generalization" and much more. It's obvious that they grasp the
  165. situation in a realistic way. The situation has structured their awareness. Some people might say that they
  166. have "modeled the situation in their mind," but it's enough to say that they understand what's going on.
  167. With that understanding, motivations and intentions form part of the perception, since the situation is a
  168. developing process. Ordinarily, we say that we "infer" motivations and intentions and "deduce" probable
  169. outcomes, but that implies that the situation is static, rather than continuous with its origin and outcome.
  170. In reality, these understandings and expectations are part of the direct perception. It isn't a matter of
  171. "intelligence" operating upon "sensations," but of intelligence inhering in the grasping of the situation.
  172. (In Latin, <strong><em>intelligo</em></strong>
  173. meant "I perceive." I suspect that a Roman might have perceived the word <strong><em>intelligens</em
  174. ></strong> as being derived from roots such as <strong><em>tele</em></strong>--from Greek, or <strong
  175. >tela,</strong> web, warp thread--and <strong><em>
  176. ligo or lego</em></strong>, connoting the binding in or gathering of what is distant or extended.)
  177. </p>
  178. <p>
  179. This view of a generalized animal intelligence wouldn't seem strange, except that the history of official
  180. western philosophy, the doctrine of genetic determinism in biology, and the habits that form with the rigid
  181. uses of language, have offered another way of looking at it. The simple intelligence of an animal would
  182. disrupt all of that important stuff, so it has become mandatory to dismiss all examples of intelligent
  183. behavior by animals as "mere anthropomorphizing." Sadly, this has also meant that most intelligent behavior
  184. by humans has also been dismissed.
  185. </p>
  186. <p>
  187. The cellular development of an organism used to be described as a process in which everything is
  188. predetermined by the genes, but the interactions between an embryo and its environment are now known to be
  189. crucial in shaping the process of maturation, so that the real organism (the phenotype) doesn't necessarily
  190. reflect its genetic make-up (genotype); the term "phenocopy" acknowledges this process.
  191. </p>
  192. <p>
  193. London taxi drivers were recently found to have an enlargement of part of the hippocampus, compared to the
  194. brains of other people, and the difference was greater, in proportion to the time they had been driving
  195. taxis. Their brains have been shaped by their activities.
  196. </p>
  197. <p>
  198. If the brain's cellular anatomy is so radically affected by activity even in adulthood, then the concept of
  199. awareness as a process in which consciousness takes its form from the situation shouldn't be problematic. If
  200. a bee and a porpoise can draw similar conclusions from similar experiences, then the world is being grasped
  201. by both in an objective way.
  202. </p>
  203. <p>
  204. The environment shapes the organism's response, and the momentary response contributes to the development of
  205. the supporting processes and apparatuses. So the ability to respond is the basic question. If the richly
  206. grasped situation contains its own implications, there is no need for explaining the ability to perceive
  207. those implications in terms of some prearranged neurological code, except for the ability to respond
  208. complexly and appropriately. Any specific interpretation or behavior which is predetermined is going to
  209. function as an impediment to understanding. Verbal formulations often have the function of creating a
  210. stereotyped and inappropriate response.
  211. </p>
  212. <p>
  213. The "genetic epistemologists" confuse their own verbal interpretations with the real ways that understanding
  214. develops, and when a child doesn't yet know all of the connotations of a specific word, the psychologist
  215. ascribes a pre-logical brain function to the child.3 The similar failure to perceive and to communicate
  216. accounts for the foolish things ethologists have said about animal intelligence.
  217. </p>
  218. <p>
  219. The process in which an organism responds to a situation is continuous with the process of communication.
  220. The organism understands that in certain situations a response can be elicited, and so it acts accordingly.
  221. </p>
  222. <p>
  223. Communication is a response that is directed toward eliciting a response from another. The idea that an
  224. animal might have an intention, or a desire to communicate or respond, has been obsessively denied by most
  225. official western philosophers, who see that as a uniquely human quality, but some philosophers have even
  226. denied that quality to humans. For them, consciousness is a passive receptacle for units of meaning and
  227. logic, like a mail bin at the post-office, where letters are received, sorted, and distributed. Maybe
  228. computers work that way, but there is nothing in living substance that works like that.
  229. </p>
  230. <p>
  231. Consciousness is participation, in the sense that there is a response of an organism to events. Even dreams
  232. and hallucinations have their implied reference to something real.
  233. </p>
  234. <p>
  235. If a violin has been soaked in water, it will sound very odd when it's played. Its various parts won't
  236. resonate properly. Similarly, the living substance has to be in a particular state to resonate properly with
  237. its environment.
  238. </p>
  239. <p>
  240. People have proposed that visual experience involves the luminescence of nerves in the optical system.
  241. Presumably, similar analogs of events could occur in various tissues when we are conscious of sounds,
  242. tastes, smells, etc. But whether or not our auditory nerves are singing when we experience music, no one
  243. questions the existence of some sort of responsive activity when we are being conscious of something.
  244. Activating certain brain areas will make us conscious of certain things, and that activation can be a
  245. response to sensory nerve impulses, or to brain chemicals produced in dreaming or drug-induced
  246. hallucinations, or to electrical stimulation, or to the act of remembering.
  247. </p>
  248. <p>
  249. The history of the prefrontal leukotomy or lobotomy, in which undesirable behaviors were surgically removed,
  250. was closely associated with the development of surgical treatments for epilepsy.
  251. </p>
  252. <p>
  253. Natalya Bekhtereva was exploring alternative treatments for epilepsy, implanting fine wire electrodes into
  254. the abnormal parts of the brain, and surrounding areas, to discover the nature of the electrical events that
  255. were associated with the seizures. In the process, she discovered that meanings and intentions corresponded
  256. to particular electrical patterns. She found that giving certain kinds of stimulation to healthy parts of
  257. the brain could stimulate the development of ways of functioning that by-passed the seizure-prone parts of
  258. the brain. Extending this, seeing that creating new patterns of nervous activity could overcome sickness,
  259. she proposed that creativity, the activation of the brain in new ways, would itself be therapeutic. Some
  260. people, such as Stanislav Grof, advocated the therapeutic use of LSD with a rationale that seems similar,
  261. for example to overcome chronic pain by changing its meaning, putting it into a different relation to the
  262. rest of experience. "In general, psychedelic therapy seems to be most effective in the treatment of
  263. alcoholics, narcotic-drug addicts, depressed patients, and individuals dying of cancer." 2 Since LSD shifts
  264. the balance away from serotonin dominance toward dopamine dominance, its effect can be to erase the habits
  265. of learned helplessness. Stress and pain also leave their residue in the endorphin system, and the
  266. anti-opiates such as naloxone can relieve depression, improve memory, and restore disturbed pituitary
  267. functions, for example leading to the restoration of menstrual rhythms interrupted by stress or aging. The
  268. amazing speed with which young animals can solve problems is undoubtedly a reflection of their metabolic
  269. vigor, and it is probably partly because they haven't yet experienced the paralysis that can result from
  270. repeated or prolonged and inescapable stress. Many of the factors responsible for the metabolic intensity of
  271. youth can be used therapeutically, even after dullness has developed. The right balance of amino acids and
  272. carbohydrates, and the avoidance of the antimetabolic unsaturated fatty acids, can make a great difference
  273. in mental functioning, even though we still don't know what the ideal formulas are.
  274. </p>
  275. <p>
  276. While chemical -- nutritional -- hormonal approaches can help to restore creativity, the work of people like
  277. Bekhtereva shows that the exercise of creativity can help to restore biochemical and physiological systems
  278. to more normal functioning. Learning new general principles or new languages can be creatively restorative.
  279. </p>
  280. <p><h3>NOTES AND REFERENCES</h3></p>
  281. <p>
  282. 1. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2000 Apr 11;97(8):4398-403. Navigation-related structural change in the
  283. hippocampi of taxi drivers. Maguire EA, Gadian DG, Johnsrude IS, Good CD, Ashburner J, Frackowiak RS, Frith
  284. CD. Structural MRIs of the brains of humans with extensive navigation experience, licensed London taxi
  285. drivers, were analyzed and compared with those of control subjects who did not drive taxis. The posterior
  286. hippocampi of taxi drivers were significantly larger relative to those of control subjects. A more anterior
  287. hippocampal region was larger in control subjects than in taxi drivers. Hippocampal volume correlated with
  288. the amount of time spent as a taxi driver (positively in the posterior and negatively in the anterior
  289. hippocampus). These data are in accordance with the idea that the posterior hippocampus stores a spatial
  290. representation of the environment and can expand regionally to accommodate elaboration of this
  291. representation in people with a high dependence on navigational skills. It seems that there is a capacity
  292. for local plastic change in the structure of the healthy adult human brain in response to environmental
  293. demands.
  294. </p>
  295. <p>
  296. 2. ("History of LSD Therapy," Stanislav Grof, M.D. Chapter 1 of LSD Psychotherapy, "1980, 1994 by Stanislav
  297. Grof. Hunter House Publishers, Alameda, California, ISBN 0-89793-158-0).
  298. </p>
  299. <p>
  300. 3. There is an example of this argument about the nature of reasoning in New Scientist magazine, December 9,
  301. 2000. P. Johnson-Laird found that more than 99% of Princeton University students were unable to solve a
  302. logical puzzle correctly. Ira Noveck of the Claude Bernard University in Lyon believes this may result
  303. simply from people's difficulty interpreting the language of the puzzles.
  304. </p>
  305. <p>
  306. Fiziol Cheloveka 2000 Mar-Apr;26(2):5-9 [The cerebral organization of creativity. I. The development of a
  307. psychological test]. Starchenko MG, Vorob'ev VA, Kliucharev VA, Bekhtereva NP, Medevedev SV.
  308. </p>
  309. <p>
  310. Fiziol Cheloveka 1998 Jul-Aug;24(4):55-63 [Brain processing of visually presented verbal stimuli at
  311. different levels of their integration. II. The orthographic and syntactic aspects]. Vorob'ev VA, Korotkov
  312. AD, Pakhomov SV, Rozhdestvenskii DG, Rudas MS, Bekhtereva NP, Medvedev SV.
  313. </p>
  314. <p>
  315. Neurosci Behav Physiol 1986 Jul-Aug; 16(4):333-9 The systemic approach to the stability and plasticity of
  316. neurophysiological processes during adaptive brain activity. Vasilevskii VN The problem of the stability and
  317. adaptability of regulatory processes is considered, taking as a point of departure N. P. Bekhtereva's theory
  318. regarding stable pathological states, and inflexible and adaptable links in control systems. The need to
  319. introduce a probabilistic approach is emphasized. Generalizations are made on materials relating to the
  320. connectability of the separate components of the biorhythms of functional systems, and to the stability of
  321. their amplitude-frequency characteristics. The corpus of facts permitted the successful development in
  322. clinical practice of functional biocontrol and feedback.
  323. </p>
  324. <p>
  325. Neurosci Behav Physiol 1986 Jul-Aug; 16(4):322-33. A study of the connectedness among distant neuronal
  326. populations in the human brain during mental activity. Bekhtereva NP, Medvedev SV, Krol EM In this article,
  327. we present the results of a study of connectedness among distant neuronal populations in human deep-brain
  328. structures. The time characteristics involved and the stability of the connections between different
  329. neuronal populations during monotonous mental activity are discussed. We show that a stable connectedness
  330. does correlate with mental activity; however, the connections themselves do not correlate with one another.
  331. We also show that the individual connections, the elements of the system which make mental activity
  332. possible, can function with various degrees of rigidity or flexibility.
  333. </p>
  334. <p>
  335. Dokl Akad Nauk SSSR 1986;289(5):1276-80 [Physiologic role of changes in the human neuron discharge rate
  336. during a single mental act]. Bekhtereva NP, Gogolitsyn IuL, Pakhomov SV.
  337. </p>
  338. <p>
  339. Dokl Akad Nauk SSSR 1985;285(5):1233-5 [Neurons-detectors of errors in subcortical structures of human
  340. brain]. Bekhtereva NP, Kropotov IuD, Ponomarev VA.
  341. </p>
  342. <p>
  343. Neurosci Behav Physiol 1985 Jan-Feb;15(1):27-32 Bioelectrical correlates of protective mechanisms of the
  344. brain. Bekhtereva NP.
  345. </p>
  346. <p>
  347. Fiziol Zh SSSR Im I M Sechenova 1984 Aug;70(8):1092-9 [Neurochemical aspects of therapeutic electric
  348. stimulation]. Bekhtereva NP, Dambinova SA, Gurchin FA, Smirnov VM, Korol'kov AV. Comparative analysis of the
  349. CSF and blood protein-peptide composition in Parkinsonian patients performed with the aid of indwelled
  350. electrodes prior to and after therapeutic electrical stimulation (TES) of the brain subcortical structures,
  351. revealed a therapeutic effect in the form of reduced muscular rigidity and a mental activation with a
  352. positive emotional response. After the TES the protein content in the biological fluids tended to become
  353. normalized and the the range of low-molecular protein-peptide fractions changed. A high-performance liquid
  354. chromatography, bidimensional electrophoresis and thin-layer chromatography revealed about 5-6 factors of
  355. peptide nature with the molecular mass less than 5000 daltons in the CSF and blood after the TES. These
  356. factors were shown to exert a biological effect upon muscle preparation of the leech.
  357. </p>
  358. <p>
  359. Fiziol Zh SSSR Im I M Sechenova 1984 Jul;70(7):892-903 [Relationships of distantly located neuronal
  360. populations in the human brain in the realization of the thinking process]. Bekhtereva NP, Medvedev SV,
  361. Krol' EM The time characteristics of the interneuronal connections as well as interrelationships among
  362. distant neuronal populations of the human brain deep structures were studied during monotonous mental
  363. activity. It was shown that stable interrelationships could be considered as a correlate of mental activity
  364. though the connections themselves were not of the correlative nature. These connections, being the elements
  365. of the activity--maintaining system, could be of various degree of rigidity.
  366. </p>
  367. <p>
  368. Fiziol Zh SSSR Im I M Sechenova 1984 Jul;70(7):881-91 [Reflection of the semantic characteristics of the
  369. thinking process in the impulse activity of neurons]. Bekhtereva NP The paper deals with the progress in
  370. research into the problem of reflection of semantic characteristics of psychological tests in impulse
  371. activity of neurons and neuronal assemblies. The high dynamicity of brain correlates of thinking in most
  372. brain zones is stressed. Advantages and limits of different technical approaches as well as the most urgent
  373. tasks to be solved are discussed.
  374. </p>
  375. <p>
  376. Fiziol Zh SSSR Im I M Sechenova 1984 Jul;70(7):1071-5 [Natal'ia Petrovna Bekhtereva]. Iliukhina VA Biography
  377. </p>
  378. <p>
  379. Hum Physiol 1982 Sep-Oct;8(5):303-16 Cerebral organization of emotional reactions and states. Bekhtereva NP,
  380. Kambarova DK, Ivanov GG
  381. </p>
  382. <p>
  383. Zh Nevropatol Psikhiatr Im S S Korsakova 1980;80(8):1127-33 [Bioelectric correlates of the brain's
  384. protective mechanisms]. Bekhtereva NP The author substantiates the necessity of searching for new means
  385. producing a therapeutic effect on the brain of epileptic patients that would be similar, in principle, to
  386. the brain's own protective mechanisms. This can be done, in the author's opinion, on the basis of studying
  387. the most probable bioelectric equivalents of the protective mechanisms. The author suggests a new method for
  388. suppressing the epileptogenic focus. This suppression, close to the physiological one, is effected by
  389. applying a weak sinusoidal current to the focus via intracerebrally implanted electrodes. Data on the
  390. suppression of the epileptiform activity within the zone of the current application, as well as data
  391. confirming the local character of the current action are presented. The place of the new method in the
  392. system of complex therapy, particularly of epilepsy, is determined with consideration of the role of the
  393. stable pathological state. Probable neurophysiological mechanisms of the sinusoidal current action on the
  394. epileptogenic focus are discussed.
  395. </p>
  396. <p>
  397. Vestn Akad Med Nauk SSSR 1979;(7):30-7 [Potentials of neurophysiology in the study of a resistant
  398. pathological state]. Bekhtereva NP
  399. </p>
  400. <p>
  401. Act Nerv Super (Praha) 1976;18(3):157-67 The neurophysiological code of simplest mental processes in man.
  402. Bekhtereva NP
  403. </p>
  404. <p>
  405. Vestn Akad Med Nauk SSSR 1975;(8):8-19 [Cerebral organization of human emotions]. Bekhtereva NP, Smirnov VM
  406. </p>
  407. <p>
  408. Fiziol Zh SSSR Im I M Sechenova 1973 Dec;59(12):1785-802 [Principles of the organization of the structure of
  409. the space-time code of short-term verbal memory]. Bekhtereva NP, Bundzen PV, Kaidel VD, David EE.
  410. </p>
  411. <p>
  412. Vopr Neirokhir 1972 Jan-Feb;36(1):7-12 [Therapeutic electric stimulation of deep brain structures].
  413. Bekhtereva NP, Bondarchuk AN, Smirnov VM, Meliucheva LA
  414. </p>
  415. <p>
  416. Vestn Akad Med Nauk SSSR 1972;27(9):43-9 [Principles of functional organization of the human brain].
  417. [Article in Russian] Bekhtereva NP.
  418. </p>
  419. <p>
  420. Fiziol Zh SSSR Im I M Sechenova 1971 Dec;57(12):1745-61 [Functional reorganization of the activity of human
  421. brain neuron populations during short-term verbal memory]. Bekhtereva NP, Bundzen PV, Matveev IuK,
  422. Kaplunovskii AS
  423. </p>
  424. <p>
  425. From a biography by the Archives Jean Piaget: "His researches in developmental psychology and genetic
  426. epistemology had one unique goal: how does knowledge grow? His answer is that the growth of knowledge is a
  427. progressive construction of logically embedded structures superseding one another by a process of inclusion
  428. of lower less powerful logical means into higher and more powerful ones up to adulthood. Therefore,
  429. children's logic and modes of thinking are initially entirely different from those of adults."
  430. </p>
  431. © Ray Peat Ph.D. 2009. All Rights Reserved. www.RayPeat.com
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