THE MENTAL OBJECT

 

Objects and interactions

An object is what an observer determines as an object. It will become objective through a process of determination. A mental object, becomes determined as an object too, because perception is a determination process, a measurement process, for the bioelectric neuronal activity involved has measure and that measure acquires a representative character during its computation. For instance: Not only action potentials reach a certain amount of discharges per second but at the same time they can configure a code as well. Perception simulates a process of observation, a representation of one, for mental objects are abstract, mere representations of other objects. The interactions between mental objects are abstract too, between letters to form words, or between shapes and colours to add, as a function of time, to form representations of red balls when the involved neurons are integrated. Interactions between mental objects are the abstract representation of interactions, not true ones; they illusorily look like true interactions at first sight, from the point of view of the macroscopic observer (for instance, a “red ball” percept looks like a truly indivisible whole to us), due to the confinement of perception on a macroscopic scale and the consequent loss of resolution to perceive the microscopic mechanism (and emergent objects and properties do not necessarily look like their microscopic elements. The macroscopic appearance of a red ball on a computer screen does not ressemble the pixels that shape it and, at the same time it does not give a clue about what those pixels could be like or if they even exist at all). This appearance of a merge between “roundness” and “redness” would hypothetically be due to a change of scale during the process of perception, from micro to macro, that would blur the microscopic process by the consequent loss of temporal resolution with the change of scale and the confinement on the macroscopic scale, which would unable the observer to be conscious of nothing but the macroscopic, and hence the illusory appearance ofthe result (A hypothetical neural mechanism behind this change of scale and confinement during perception will be proposed in the final chapter). The blurring in this case would refer to the fact that “round shape” and “red colour”, when merged as “red ball”, would still be fundamentally two objects, although blurred their duality as a function of time (like the duality of the pixels on the screen is blurred as a function of space when the magnifying glass is removed). The loss of temporal resolution prevents the two synchronized objects (shape and colour) to be perceived as two different successive objects (and the emergent interpretation of this fact is this strange abstract merge of shape and colour, the same as the emergent mental interpretation of the projection of successive frames perceived as a whole on a movie screen is that of the movement of an actor). For this result the correspondent sets of neurons have to be synchronized beyond the capability of the brain for temporal resolution at first sight to discriminate them as two on the emergent macroscopic scale, the same as we would perceive two successive sound beeps as one if they were to close to each other for our temporal resolution capability (As is the case of the “quantum of consciousness” mentioned below), so shape and colour would look like one thing to us. This is a matter of scales: If the microscopic mechanism takes place in a microscopic scale which is incompatible with the macroscopic scale where perception takes place, the microscopic mechanism will not be effective (detectable) from the macroscopic point of view (In the case of the pixels this possibility takes place because two scales are applied on a same screen at the same time for the same phenomenon, the same pixels and their configuration are pixels through a magnifying glass and a red ball with the naked eye, so now a first issue will be to deduce how that “same screen” phenomenon would take place in the case of the brain, how would a same set of neurons assemble to accomplish that: To be detectable as neurons on a microscopic scale and as a red ball on a macroscopic scale. A second issue will be to deduce how the brain would be able to verify two different scales on a same set of neurons at the same time; a hypothetical explanation will be offered in the final chapter). The mind is abstract information that shapes mental objects, determined as objects as soon as the nervous system automatically integrates some behaviour purposefully and specifically directed towards that object with a meaning, based on genetically programmed instinctive responses, and other options memorized during life, like trial/error options and cultural options (non genetic information transmitted through socialization). Nevertheless, not all the integrated objective thinking derives in a behaviour; being so strangely big, the human brain performs much “useless” abstract thinking without a motor response as a result.

If a dynamic system is defined by its elements and their interactions, the mental objects, although abstract, are the elements the mind systematically operates with. For instance: If the letters are mental objects, the mind operates with them to form words. Given two mental objects, if they are consciously perceived distinctly as two different objects as a function of time each of them is called a “percept”. Kristofferson, in an article (“Kristofferson A.B. Quantal and deterministic timing in human duration discrimination. Ann N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1984; 423: 3-15”) wrote that there would be a time limit of 12,5 miliseconds below which it would not be possible to consciously discriminate between two succesive auditory stimuli. He named it “quantum of consciousness”, a minimum time necessary for an auditory percept to occur, to be obviously effective as such percept as a function of time. It was the minimum time they found out that was necessary to distinguish between two successive auditory stimuli. If the time range between both stimuli were under 12,5 ms they would appear as one object from the point of view of the conscious observer, one beep instead of two, although still discriminable as two if detected by other more sensitive means, more sensitive than conscious perception and its characteristic lack of resolution, and on a lesser time scale than that used by conscious perception. As the “red ball” percept has parts, shape and colour, but they are indivisible at first sight, this inability to discriminate its parts separately, and given that they probably become merged when they are simultaneous, should have to do with a loss of temporal resolution to distinguish them as two objects then, as in the previous case of the “quantum of consciousness. It should have to do, using words on the matter by Husserl, with their entanglement throughout the unity of the course of the mental process. Let us keep in mind this word, “entanglement”. This uniqueness and indivisibility of “red ball” (and of consciousness) is an illusion, because they are coded in different sets of neurons, so they are two things, not one. An illusion is an error of perception due to a lack of spatial resolution, temporal resolution, or both. They are two objects in fact, not one, so their appearance as one is an illusion due to a loss of temporal resolution at first sight. During the visual observation of a red snooker ball by someone, when the light reflected on a red snooker ball reaches the back of the eye, some of those photons will truly interact with some of the electrons of the molecules of photosensitive pigment inside some of the cones and rods of the retina, but all in all the perception of reality that the brain performs is not a true observation, strictly speaking, like in quantum physics. Anyway, our perception is confined in a macroscopic reality, so we, as conscious macroscopic observers, can neither notice nor correct the error.

The observer

Interactions between elementary particles are not abstract, they are actual interactions, true ones. When an electron interacts with a photon that is not an abstraction of an interaction, the electron is elementary and it truly absorbs the elementary photon, and that electron truly changes its state, for instance, it changes its level of energy. That change of the electron is a measure of the photon, it is an observation of the photon by the electron, because, according to specialists, in quantum physics the observation and the observer are one and the same. Perhaps it was based on this concept that Schrödinger wrote in his book, “Mente y materia”, something that I read in 1983 and sprung my interest in the brain/mind/consciousness and the binding problem issues, an idea that other authors, like Hegel, had shared previously, but with a possible reference to quantum physics in the case of Schrödinger. He wrote that the subject (the subjective conscious observer, the conscious self) and the object (the mental object of conscious perception, the percept) are also one thing only (like observer and observation in quantum mechanics). This would mean that the information coded by some brain neurons during conscious perception would be the object of perception, the percept, and the conscious self itself at the same time. Thus, in the brain the individual conscious macroscopic observer would the conscious process of perception itself, the same set of neurons (this is congruent with the idea that to be conscious you have to be conscious of something). This is a counterintuitive idea, as in our macroscopic experience we are used to conceive an observer as a third party and we could also consider ourselves observers of reality acting as a third party too, because when two snooker balls collide and we can observe that collision on the television set we can feel ourselves as a third party, we can feel the action taking place outside of us and at a distance away, we can feel and strongly believe that the red balls we perceive are on the TV screen, solid, not inside our head, abstract. We will not feel that what we perceive as red balls out there is some abstract reconstruction of reality inside our heads, although that is what it is. The brain does not project an image of a red ball to a conscious observer that lives inside the brain on a screen with that purpose. The conscious observer is that mental image too, the conscious self is the process of perception itself, when it becomes unique and individual and that continuously enduring uniqueness and individuality emerges with the illusory meaning of a conscious individual. The content of the percepts changes (red balls, white balls, black balls…), but that uniqueness and individuality that characterizes all of them persists unchanged and confined as such throughout the process, as an objective emergent meaning of its own, and hence the illusion of a conscious individual in charge of conscious perception. To feel inside like a conscious individual, alien to what one is perceiving, like an independent observer of the facts under surveillance, hides the truth: The mental image we feel represents a ball on the TV, but it is in our head. The feeling of independent observation is only a feeling, a deception, an illusion based on an imprecision, a lack of resolution. Changeaux shared a same point of view when he wrote that the subjective experience, conscious perception, from the actual point of view of a conscious observing subject, is objective. This illusion of a conscious self acting as a third party observer during perception is nevertheless convenient, because we rather believe that red balls and crocodiles are out there, when they are, and not only in our heads, for crocodiles also act as if they believed that their prey is out there too, otherwise we would probably be less adapted for survival.

Graphs, neural mapping and the percept

The mind, besides being representative, also posseses an specific (clearly defined), isomorphic (same shape) and a mnesic (memoristic) character, and congruence (not contradictory). Changeaux wrote in his book, “El hombre neuronal”, that the similarity between the shape of the mental object and the represented object must be based on a neural map of a neural graph. A graph is a type of mathematical diagrams. That map, a spatial coding trick, is able to constitute a specific and isomorphic neural object and therefore to be useful as a congruent abstraction. With these kind of thoughts in mind, Changeaux also wondered about how would neurons build up mental objects, beginning with the elements assembled on each increasing level of organization, going from microscopic (neurons, circuits) to macroscopic (networks). According to Changeaux the neural process involved in correlation with the effectiveness of mental objects, that he named formation of the primary percept, would have to do with an entry in simultaneous activity, or integration by synchronization, through multiple parallel paths, of primary and secondary representations in the cortex, and through reciprocal interactions between them, to assure the wholeness of the percept. Intuition grants this possibility, that the neural sets for shape and colour should have to synchronize somehow, to be simultaneous, and therefore make the merge of shape and colour, as a function of time, to form a mental image of a red ball, round and red at the same time, possible, because, to perceive a red ball as a fusion of shape and colour, the different neural sets involved should necessarily maintain their activity together simultaneously, and therefore coherent, coordinated and synchronized. Damasio, in his book, “El error de Descartes”, wrote that a mere representation of objects in the mind would not be enough to be subjectively conscious of such images, some synchronization between those representations should be necessary. Some efforts have been made by several authors to unveil this aporia about the percept and its neural mechanism. Changeaux wrote that he suspected that interactive back and forth connections in the encephalon, what Edelman and Tononi called “reentry”, some of which are known to neuroanatomists, had to be a part of this mechanism involved in the origin of mental objects during conscious perception. Changeaux proposed that the mental object identifies with the physical state which is produced by the entry in a transient correlative activity by large sets of neurons distributed in wide defined cortical areas. This type of distribution can be described with a graph, a mathematical tool that uses nodes and edges. The nodes represent the neurons and the edges the synapses between them. This graph happens to be differentiated, closed and autonomous, but not homogeneous, as was necessary. Changeaux described the correlation of neurons during their interactions as a graph and, as a matter of fact, the concept of graph is already being used even for clinical applications (see: “Ching S et al. Graph theory findings in the pathophysiology of temporal lobe epilepsy. Clinical Neurophysiology 2014; 125: 1295-1305; or also in: “Pastor J et al. Conectividad funcional y redes complejas en el estudio de la epilepsia focal. Implicaciones y fisiopatología. Revista de Neurología 2014; 58: 411-19”).

The binding problem

The still unobserved, in a laboratory, neural mechanism behind this entanglement or fusion of mental objects during perception, by neural synchronization, that would give rise to percepts through a loss of that capability for temporal resolution in the discrimination of simultaneous mental objects, is a classical issue and it is known as the “binding problem”. If one eye is covered blind the other eye can be used to form one complete mental image of a red ball. If the eye is uncovered next and both eyes are simultaneously used now to form that mental image the result will still be one mental image of a red ball, not two balls, even though now we would be using two eyes to form that image. It was considered, at the time of Sherrington, that perceiving one object instead of two when using both eyes could not be due to a cancellation of the image originated by one of the eyes, because the unique image as a result of the use of both eyes was stereoscopic, while the images originated using one eye only were not, so the image using both eyes at the same time should be a fusion of the images from both eyes, as a result of an integration, by synchronization, probably, of the activity of the correlative neural sets involved, because that is what neurons do and time is the parameter involved in this inseparability of mental objects when merged. As a result, the integrated whole would be more, stereoscopic in this case, than the sum of its parts (a hint of its emergent character, later considered fundamental to try and understand consciousness by some authors on the matter, like Francis Crick). Sherrington noted as soon as back then this necessary coincidence in time of that correlative neural activity for the binding mechanism to take place, the necessary neuronal synchronization. The merge of the image of both eyes and the merge of “round shape” and “red colour” to form “red ball” are two sides of the same “binding problem”.

To try and solve the binding problem, given that the synchronization of frequencies would not be the answer, I proposed and published this “phase synchronization between single signals” hypothesis for the first time years ago (“Fontoira, M. Mente y biofísica II. Revista de Neurología 2010; 51: 190-1”): The transient phase synchronization between neuronal single signals of different but compatible neural networks in association cortex, during the process of perception, could be the key to the neural mechanism able to explain that fusion of mental objects behind the formation of the percept and in addition the emergence of consciousness. Fortunately, this hypothesis is provable and falsifiable, as the technique to detect neuronal single signals with microelectrodes has been available for years in several laboratories around the world (see, for instance: “Weinberger, M. et al. Oscillatory activity in the globus pallidus internus: Comparison between Parkinson´s disease and dystonia. Clinical Neurophysiology 2012; 123: 358-368”). When I came up with this hypothesis of a synchronization of concrete sequences of trains of action potentials of single neurons discharging at different frequencies, instead of a synchronization of all of their action potentials (of their frequencies), and learned that it was a physical phenomenon already known in wave mechanics, called “phase synchronization”, and concluded that therefore a phase synchronization between single signals should be taking place during conscious perception, I started a bibliographic search to see who else had come to the same obvious conclusion too. To my surprise, I did not find anyone else on the matter. I only found a mention to phase synchronization between complex signals, which is a different case. Phase synchronization between complex signals had already been described (“Varela, F. J. et al. Phase synchronization and Large-Scale integration”. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2001; 2: 229-239”), but it uses large big neural sets for measurement, not single signals, so they cannot prove this hypothesis. Hence, research on phase synchronization between single signals in the cortex should be the main objective to prove this hypothesis and explain percepts and consciousness.

Emergence

Shape and colour fuse, forming an emergent mental object, in which the whole would be more, unique and indivisible, than the sum of its parts, due to the fact that the brain is a non-linear chaotic system. If the brain were a linear system, ruled by the superposition principle, round shape and red colour would add up as two objects, one object round and colourless and the other one red and shapeless, not as a unique and individual mental object, the “red ball” percept. This emergent character should be possible due to a loss of resolution (blurring of the microscopic elements) with a change of scale during the process of perception. That change of scale would be what would make the illusion possible, whence the information would become integrated, as the multiple blurred microscopic parts would become meaningful macroscopic wholes, including the qualitative character sensations are perceived with, like redness, roundness, etc. This emergence of the percept by this hypothetical change of scale is analogous to what happens with the emergence, from a macroscopic conscious observer’s point of view at first sight with the naked eye, of a macroscopic image of a red ball represented on a computer screen by microscopic pixels. The pixels would be the microscopic elements on the screen, as the neurons would be the microscopic elements in the brain. The pixels can be perceived, for instance, if that is the case, as the emergent macroscopic image of a red ball on the screen of a computer on the macroscopic scale, although they will remain being multiple microscopic pixels (coloured light dots) on the microscopic scale. The pixels will be representing that emerging object on a macroscopic scale image by way of the algorithmic configuration they adopt on the microscopic scale; the macroscopic red ball on the screen is an illusion, the screen is formed by pixels, not by a true solid red ball to pick up from the screen and play snooker with. The ball simply emerges effectively (really) but illusorily on a macroscopic scale according to an observer’s point of view (that makes that information to have sense) with a change of scale due to the lack of spatial resolution (spatial in this example) of the visual system (the eye) to discriminate the microscopic pixels (once the magnifying glass is removed and therefore the scale at which the observation is taking place changes). The pixels get blurred like that (with this change of scale), so they cannot be perceived one by one as such with this circumstantial loss of spatial resolution at first sight with the naked eye. Nevertheless, the pixels are still visible, although blurred; their light still reaches the eye, so they are perceived as a mass of blurred pixels, and, due to their previously determined (programmed) algorithmic microscopic configuration on the screen, perceivable as something with both a circumstantial but also an intentional (in this case) meaning at first sight, a red ball in this example, and, as the red ball will be perceived on a macroscopic scale only, in these specific systematic circumstances, it is an emergent red ball.

Scaling

Thus, in a physical system two (or more) objects (two or more pixels) can be detected as one (one red ball) if the process of observation of the two objects is performed with what is called in physics “scaling”, which refers to the change in the magnitude obtained as the result of a measurement when the scale of measurement is changed from micro to macro, an important concept in quantum physics, for instance. It also includes the change in the resolution with which the measurement is performed and therefore the change in the way things are perceived depending on the scale employed. For instance: On a computer screen, on a microscopic scale, with a proper magnifying glass, the pixels will be perceived by the viewer who is using the magnifying glass as pixels; on the other hand, on a macroscopic scale, at first sight with the naked eye, after removing the glass to change the scale from micro to macro, the pixels will still be seen but they will not be perceived as pixels anymore, because of the change of scale and the consequent loss of spatial resolution. The loss of resolution implies that the pixels will be too small to be perceived one by one as such from the macroscopic point of view, they will be blurred and form a whole (with or without a given macroscopic meaningful shape, depending on their microscopic interactions and resulting configuration). Thus, the pixels on the computer screen (or the neurons inside the brain) could shape, or code, for instance, an image representing what could be taking as an emergent illusory red snooker ball on the large scale, although indiscernible as such on a microscopic scale. The change of scale and scaling help explain how emergent properties and objects can be observed in systems whose state of things is changing. Specific objects and properties seem to emerge on a macroscopic scale within that system when a particular change of the state of things takes place before an observer with scaling, when a peculiar interaction of the elements of the system takes place on a fundamental microscopic scale before a confined macroscopic observer perceiving things through a change of scale and a loss of resolution for the microscopic. Those microscopic interactions result in a rise in the amount of information of the system, which becomes detectable, on a macroscopic scale, in the form of emergent objects and properties. The word “emergence” means, in these cases, a dynamic change in the form of the matter of a system, an increase in the amount of information, but accordingly to the way that information is perceived on a scale which is relatively macroscopic respect of the scale on which the interaction of the microscopic elements of the system is taking place, after a change of scale and the correspondent loss of resolution (spatial resolution, temporal resolution, or both). Then, if consciousness were an emergent phenomenom of the brain, the process of perception should be taking place on a confined relatively macroscopic scale, with scaling, and with a loss of resolution too. A hypothetical neural mechanism compatible with this will be presented in the final chapter.