Notes from BSP-21 Body Maps

Because it turns out that, at least for mammals, we need to have feedback from our own bodily movements in order to give meaning to what is seen. Sensation only makes sense as it relates to
your embodiment.

conflict between what they call the body schema and the body image. The body schema is the felt sense based on the physical properties of your body, whereas your body image stems from learned attitudes about your body.

One thing that’s interesting is the fact that our body schema can expand to include our clothing. So, for example if a person is wearing a hat, you will typically see them duck when they enter a doorway.

“Perception is not a process of passive absorption, but of active construction.” So, basically our brain is constantly comparing incoming information to what it expects or believes. And it can even alter the incoming information to fit its expectations. Our predictions and our beliefs can actually work against us.

our understanding of reality is constructed in large part according to our beliefs and our expectations. And these, of course, are based on our past experience.

the new knowledge basically shows that when someone is imagining an activity it activates the same part of the brain that is used to do that activity

Gibson came up with something called the theory of affordances, which was the idea that people and animals look at the world in terms of its behavioral potential instead of the objective what’s there.

People vary in their awareness of the space around them, and research indicates that this seems to relate to the so-called place and grid cells. Both place and grid cells are located in the memory-forming hippocampus, which as you may recall is much older than the cerebral cortex. The place cells map the space around you in terms of your environment.

Basically we have a map of that space in our brain that seems to be created by these place cells. And we seem to make a new combo of these place cells to represent a new place fairly rapidly if we go into a new environment.

The point is that the body maps are flexible and they extend out to include things
like tools.

mirror cells. These are the neurons that light up when we see someone else doing something.

a few quotes from 'The Brain that Changes Itself'

"thinking, learning, and acting can turn our genes on or off, thus shaping our brain anatomy and our behavior" (Doidge)

"skin and its touch receptors could substitute for a retina, because both the skin and the retina are two dimensional sheets, covered with sensory receptors, that allow a "picture" to form on them." (Doidge, p.16)

"conceive of the brain as "polysensory' --that its sensory areas were able to process signals from more than one sense. " (Doidge, p.17)

"the brain can be improved so that we learn and perceive with greater precision, speed, and retention. ... we can also change the very structure of the brain itself and increase its capacity to learn. Unlike a computer, the brain is constantly adapting itself." (Doidge 48)

"The cerebral cortex... is actually selectively refining its processing capacities to fit each task at hand." It doesn't simply learn; it is always "learning how to learn." (Doidge 48)

brain maps "are neither immutable wintin a single brain nor universal but vary in their borders and size from person to person. ...our brain maps changes depending upon what we do over the course of our lives." (Doidge 48)

the human brain forms maps to represent the body and the world. 'Maps were dynamic."

"In creating this world he is actually determining what kind of an organism he will be."
Edward T. Hall