human soccer ball The Body Mandala -- Or, Maps, Maps, Everywhere

If someone asks you, "Does your hand belong to you ?"Of course, you will say.But ask neuroscientists the same question and they will ask you the other way around: how do you know this is your own hand?How do you know you have a body?Why do you think you own it?How do you know where your body starts and where it ends?How do you track where it is in space?: Imagine that there is a line in the middle of your body, divided into the left half and the right half.With your right hand, shoot different parts of your body on the right ---Cheeks, shoulders, hips, thighs, knees, feet.
With your fingers, line your right eyebrows and the right part of the upper and lower lips.You can distinguish these body parts from each other, because each part is faithfully mapped in two-In your left brain, specializing in the size of the nerve tissue of the touch.The same thing happens on the left side of your body: all parts of it are mapped in similar areas of your right brain.
Your brain maintains a complete map of the surface of your body, with patches for each finger, hand, cheek, lips, eyebrows, shoulders, hips, knees, and all other parts.Maps can be defined as any scheme that lists a mapto-Correspondence between two different things.In the road map, any given point on the map corresponds to a location in the larger world, and each adjacent point on the map represents an adjacent Realworld location.
The same applies to the body map in your brain.Aspects of the external world and the anatomy of the body are systematically mapped to the brain tissue.Therefore, the topology or spatial relationship of your body surface is highly retained in your touch map: The foot map is next to the shin map, next to the thigh map, next to the hip map.
Whenever someone shoots your shoulder, the nerve cells in the shoulder area in this map are activated.When playing football, the corresponding part of the foot chart is activated.When you scratch your elbow, both the elbow area and the fingertip area are activated.
This map is your main physical window to the world around you, and is the entrance to your brain for all the raw touch information flow every moment.This touch information is collected by special receptors throughout the body, transported to the spinal cord and sent to the brain along two main pathways.Older in these pathways are pain, temperature, itching, itching, sexual sensation, rough touch-For example, knowing that you hit your knee, not your knee, is not sharp enough to tell a penny from a dime ---And sexy touch, including gentle maternal love, which is crucial for the development of your body map as a child.
The evolutionary path of renewal carries fine touch information.-The kind you need to put a needle or leaf into a book ---and position-and-Location information from receptors embedded in joints, bones and muscles.Once these multiple sensory information channels reach your brain, they are combined to create complex composite sensations such as humidity, feathers, pulp and rubber.
So are many varieties of pain.
Through the combination of pain-and touch --Related signals, you can get a rich and varied unpleasant experience, including the tingling of sunburn, the shooting pain of wrist tube syndrome, the perforated pain of stab wounds, the dull beating pain of the abused knee, healing itching pain and so on.There is also a major exercise map in your brain for exercise.Instead of receiving input from the skin, this map sends an output signal to the muscles.
Like a touch map, this exercise map is also found on both sides of the brain.Guiding your body parts to become fine is essential to your abilityTune motion in space and take on complex positions-Like a prank.Pokey, play hockey, or assume poker face in high-risk card games.
When you swing all your toes, the toe and foot areas of your sports map are active.The tongue and chin area of the map is active when you stick out your tongue.Thanks to this map, all the lowHorizontal, most of the unconscious tasks of the coordinated movement unfold smoothly without any faults.
Elsewhere in your brain, you also have a very different but equally important body map showing the internal organs of all your bodies.This is your main visceral map, pieced together by small neural samples representing your heart, lungs, liver, colon, rectum, stomach and all other internal organs.This map is unique and superIt develops in the human species, and it gives you access to the ebb and flow of internal feelings that are unmatched anywhere else in the animal kingdom.
You feel desire, disgust, sadness, joy, shame and humiliation due to this body mapping.These heartfelt inputs to the mind are the source of a rich and vivid sense of emotion that few other creatures approach.The activity on this map is the basis of the voice of your conscience, the stimulation of music, the subtle and moral-sensitive self of emotion.
Your brain draws not only your body, but also the space around your body that expands and shrinks everyday objects, even if these maps can be shaped by the culture you grow up in, it is also very new to science.Now research shows that your brain is full of body maps.-A map of your body's surface, muscles, intentions, potential for action, and even a map that automatically tracks and simulates the actions and intentions of others around you.
These body-The map of the center is plastic.-Able to carry out major restructuring of damage, experience or practice.They form in the early days of life, as experience matures, and then continue to change for the rest of your life, despite the speed.
However, despite how important these body maps are to your existence, you just have a pleasant perception of your own incarnation most of the time, not to mention that its parameters are constantly changing and year after year, every second.You may not really appreciate the amount of work being done behind your conscious mind that makes the experience of the Avatar look so natural.The past of our evolution, our control system enhances the future.
Your body is not just a tool for the brain to travel through.The relationship is completely equal: your body and your brain exist with each other.A body that can move or rest, touch or Dodge, burn or warm, freeze or cool, tense or rest, starve, devour or nourish is the reason for the presence of the senses.
The feeling of your skin and body-Touch, temperature, pain, and something else you will know ---Is the real foundation of your mind.All your other senses have just increased.More convenient.After all, humans can live well without sight and hearing.
Even people like Helen Keller who lack these two senses can thrive both mentally and physically.The brain of a natural deaf person does not develop an auditory map, and the brain of a person who is born blind never forms a visual map, or even a brain of a deaf person --The blind have a map of the body.In contrast, a vision or hearing that does not have a physical connection between vision and sound is just a mental empty pattern of information.
Meaning is rooted in the agent (the ability to act and choose) and the agent depends on the embodiment.In fact, it's all tough.The AI community has finally begun to grasp the lesson after decades of setbacks: In a mainframe without a body, nothing truly intelligent will develop.There is no invisible consciousness in real life.
The sum of your countless flexible deformed body maps produces a solid-The subjective feeling of "I"And your ability to understand and navigate the world around you.You can imagine the map as a mandala, and its overall pattern creates your experience self.All your other minds-Vision, hearing, language, memory-Hanging like an organ on a bone in the matrix of this body mandala.
From the perspective of development, it is impossible to become a person with thoughts and self.People without them.The above is an excerpt from the book "The body has its own ideas", published by Sandra blelectrolux and Matthew blelectrolux;September 2007;$24.95US/$32.00CAN;978-1-4000-6469-AuthorSandra blakkeslee is a regular contributor to The New York Times devoted to brain science.
She has co-Including Phantom with V in the brainS.with Judith S.Wallersein.Science writer.Matthew Blakeslee is a freelance science writer in Los Angeles.He represents the fourth generation of scientific writers.
This is his first book.